


Leaves of Memory

by sahiya



Series: The Importance of Being Human in Cardiff [4]
Category: Doctor Who, Torchwood
Genre: Drama, F/M, Fix-It, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-24
Updated: 2011-03-24
Packaged: 2017-10-17 06:15:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 49,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/173802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sahiya/pseuds/sahiya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Donna’s brain starts melting down, Jack calls the Doctor back to Earth to deal with it. Meanwhile, Ianto wants a mortgage, Rose is finding that life in the TARDIS isn’t everything she remembered, and there are these . . . things on the Plass. So basically, it’s just a typical Torchwood Sunday.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Many, MANY thanks to my beta fuzzyboo03, who’s been reading and hearing about this story for months now. Thank you also to beta Significant Owl for coming in as a pair of fresh eyes at the end.

_The leaves of memory seemed to make  
A mournful rustling in the dark._  
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

 _One need not be a Chamber -- to be Haunted --  
One need not be a House --  
The Brain has Corridors -- surpassing  
Material Place --_  
-Emily Dickinson, "Time and Eternity"

Donna's head was killing her.

It'd been killing her for months now, or maybe it just made her want to die. She couldn't live like this much longer; she hadn't left the house or seen the sun in weeks. She slept as much as she could, just to escape the pain, but her dreams were strange and elusive.

On the bright side, the Migraine Diet was working out well for her waistline. If she ever got better, she'd probably be able to fit into all the trousers in the box under the bed labeled _Pipe Dream_ , and then maybe her mother would finally shut up.

Not that her mum was saying much right now. Neither was her granddad, except to push more tea at her. He'd taken to haunting the import shops for anything that might help. She'd tried headache remedies from every corner of the globe by now, but nothing worked. She was starting to think nothing ever would, that perhaps this was simply her life from now on, at least until one of her useless doctors got around to admitting it was a tumor.

"It's not a tumor," her granddad told her, when Donna said as much to him. He was sitting with her in the lounge, all the curtains drawn, reading _Harry Potter_ aloud by the light of a single lamp. It was two in the afternoon on a Tuesday. She should have been at work, except she hadn’t worked in weeks. "And things will get better, you'll see. You just need to rest - you've been under a lot of stress -"

"What stress?" she asked. "I was a _temp_. It's a tumor, it has to be. Someplace they can't see." The idea had frightened her so much in the beginning, but now she just wished someone would tell her.

"Don't say that."

"Why not?" she sighed. "Should I just go on pretending everything's fine till I keel over and die?"

"Donna, please," her granddad said, a note of real pleading in his voice. "Please, don't say that. Don't ever say that."

She felt her eyes flood with tears. She cried so easily now, it hardly took anything at all. "I'm sorry," she said, reaching blindly for his hand. "I'm sorry, it just . . . it hurts." She pressed the heel of her free hand into her right eye, hard. "I just want it to end. I just want it to _stop hurting_."

He reached for her, pulling her in for a hug. "I know. I know, sweetheart. Look, maybe it's time for one of the pills from the doctor to help you sleep."

She squeezed her eyes shut. "I don't want to sleep. The dreams'll come."

He stilled. "What dreams?" His hand tightened on her arm. "Donna, what do you dream about?"

She gave a watery laugh. "Math, mostly. I don't know, I didn't want to say anything, because it sounds so strange. I was always good with numbers, but this is stuff I never learned. All circles and geometric shapes. Calculus maybe, though I don't think I'd know calculus if it bit me. It's weird. Creepy." She tucked herself closer. "I hate it. And it's not like the damn pills really do anything." Enough of them might, though. The label cautioned against overdoses. Enough pills and she wouldn’t feel anything at all.

"Donna, listen to me." Her granddad took her by the chin and forced her to look at him. "You mustn't give up. You're my brave Donna. You can do this." He kissed her forehead. "Now close your eyes and try to relax. We’ll finish this chapter, and then you'll take a pill."

Donna closed her eyes and let her granddad's voice wash over her. The words didn't matter, just the voice. It couldn't stop the pain, but it drowned it out for a few seconds at a time. The pain, and the numbers. It wasn't much, but it was all she had.


	2. Chapter 2

Sunday mornings were Jack's favorite time of the week. Gwen never came into the Hub on Sundays unless trouble was brewing, which meant even Ianto felt little urge to make any effort to be presentable. The portable Rift monitor got shoved under the bed, putting it out of sight and out of mind (though not out of earshot), leaving the three of them free to laze about, making love and dozing until hunger eventually forced them out of bed.

At the moment, Jack was watching the Doctor go down on Ianto - exquisitely, from the sound of it. Ianto was not usually so vocal. Jack was sprawled out beside them, turned onto his side so he could rub idly against Ianto's hip even as he skimmed a hand up and down Ianto's body. The Doctor dipped his head, his cheeks hollowed, and Ianto cried out. His back arched as he came, and he froze like that for an impossibly long moment before sinking back down onto the bed. He looked damn near unconscious, but his hand searched out the Doctor's head to stroke, gently; the Doctor kissed the tip of Ianto's cock, looked up, and caught Jack's eye. His mouth was swollen, his eyes half-lidded, dark, and promising.

"What do you want?" Jack asked, holding his gaze. The Doctor smiled. Jack held his hand out; the Doctor crawled across Ianto, settled himself on top of Jack, and kissed him. Jack let his hands roam, over the ridges of the Doctor's spine - still so prominent, even on the Torchwood diet of pizza and takeaway - down his sides, and finally over the curve of his ass.

"Mmm," the Doctor murmured, into Jack's neck. "That's lovely, but not quite what I had in mind."

"Oh yeah?" Jack said, anticipation coiling in his stomach. He turned his head to meet the Doctor's eyes from inches away. The brown iris was almost entirely swallowed by black pupil. "What did you have in mind?"

The Doctor sat up. "Roll over. Onto your knees, Captain."

Jack obeyed without thought, almost before the words had registered. The Doctor rarely gave orders outside the bedroom; Torchwood was Jack's to command, and he was relieved - not to mention surprised - that he only rarely had to remind the Doctor of that. But inside the bedroom was a different story. Occasionally, when Jack was very, very lucky, the Doctor let a little of the Oncoming Storm that still lurked in him out to play.

He rolled over onto his stomach and got up onto his knees. Ianto had shifted enough to watch, and they exchanged a quiet, intimate look, even as the Doctor's slicked-up fingers breached Jack's body. Two at once, no preliminaries; Jack lowered his head to his arms, unable to hold Ianto's gaze. The Doctor was fast and a little rough with him, very different from the slow, almost careful blow job he'd given Ianto, but that was how Jack liked it. When the Doctor pushed into him, Jack pushed back, earning himself a smack to the ass.

"No topping from the bottom," the Doctor admonished him.

Through the blood rushing in his ears, Jack heard Ianto laugh. "Good luck. This is Jack, you know."

"Hmm. We'll see about that," the Doctor said, voice breathless and strained. He began thrusting in earnest. Jack gripped the bedsheets and groaned, wondering just what he'd done to earn this and if he might do it again very soon. He surrendered himself to the Doctor's rhythm, keeping just enough focus to prevent himself from being pushed into the wall. His untouched cock rubbed against the bedsheets, and he could feel his orgasm building at the base of his spine, coiling up tight and hot.

Until the Doctor stopped. Fully sheathed in Jack's body, he simply stopped moving. Jack made a noise. It was a not a whimper. Jack Harkness never whimpered.

"You were about to come," the Doctor said. "I'm not ready for you to come yet. When I'm ready, I'll touch you. Understand?"

Jack nodded. He bit his lip until he tasted blood.The Doctor started moving again, slowly at first, building his rhythm back up. Jack held himself at the edge of orgasm through sheer force of will, teetering without falling. All it took was a single stroke of the Doctor's hand, once he finally touched him. Jack gasped and came; the Doctor thrust into him one final time and followed, hands locked hard on Jack's hips.

The first thing Jack was aware of, when the bliss finally lifted enough for him to be aware at all, was Ianto with a flannel in hand, gently cleaning him off. Jack blinked up at him. "How long?" he managed, around a tongue that felt too big for his mouth.

"Couple minutes. The Doctor's still out." Ianto cocked his head to one side, then stroked a hand through his hair. "Are you all right?"

Jack stretched, carefully so as not to dislodge the Doctor. "I'm brilliant. God, I keep thinking we've peaked and then it just gets better." He opened his eyes. "Why? Are you all right?"

Ianto nodded, a bit too quickly. "Yes, it's just - I didn't know you liked that sort of thing." Jack raised an eyebrow. "Taking orders, I mean."

"Ah," Jack said. "It - well, it depends on the person. It doesn't mean anything," he added hastily. Ianto looked skeptical. "Well - maybe it does. But it doesn't matter. You’re different with him, too, from how you are with me."

Ianto frowned. "I am?" Jack nodded, giving half a shrug. "How so?"

Jack considered this. "Sweeter," he said at last. "You two are sweeter with each other. And that's all right - I like watching it. It's beautiful." He hesitated. "Did you like watching this?"

Ianto nodded. "Yes. It was just . . . intense."

Jack smiled and reached up to cup Ianto's jaw in his hand. "Intense isn't bad. Bit unusual for a Sunday morning, but not bad. C'mere." He held up one corner of the wrecked duvet for Ianto, who crawled beneath and spooned against him. "Speaking of which, what time is it?"

"Just gone noon. We should get up."

"Says who? I'm happy where I am, aren't you?"

Ianto said nothing. Jack glanced down, wondering if he'd fallen asleep again so soon, but he was awake, eyes open and staring at the ceiling. Jack suddenly felt chilled, despite being sandwiched between two warm bodies. "Aren't you?" he repeated.

Ianto rolled onto his side, propping himself up on one elbow to look down at Jack. "You know that dentist's appointment I had on Wednesday?"

"Yeah . . ." The chills were now accompanied by a sinking feeling in Jack's stomach.

"It wasn't a dentist’s appointment. I met with an estate agent."

This was so far from anything Jack had expected to hear - had feared hearing - that for a moment all he could do was blink. "An estate agent?" he repeated. "You want to buy a house?"

"No," Ianto said, with palpable patience. "I want _us_ to buy a house."

Jack felt his mouth drop open. "Oh," he managed.

"It's just . . . I like natural light and leaving the Hub sometimes. I was thinking it'd be nice to have some place where we could all have our own spaces. Maybe a garden."

Jack raised an eyebrow. "A garden?"

"Maybe." Ianto looked a little . . . defiant. As though he expected to be shot down, but was going to argue every step of the way. "I'm not proposing that we buy something terribly ambitious. I know that between the two of you, you could buy half of Cardiff, but that's not the point. I just - I want something that's ours."

"Hmm." A house. He'd never owned a house, not even with Estelle. Houses and mortgages - to most people, they meant permanence. Jack swallowed against the sudden creeping dread. "How long have you been thinking about this?"

"Awhile," Ianto said, cagily. Jack frowned. "Since the Doctor got ill a couple months ago," he admitted. "It was such a hassle with the ladder, and then I got ill and I'm sure you remember how well that went, with the three of us in my flat. I started looking at online listings then." Ianto shrugged, an obvious attempt at nonchalance. "So . . . what do you think?"

Jack wasn't sure he thought anything at all about it yet, but he felt vaguely nauseated. His central nervous system seemed to be having a field day; he was close to breaking out in a cold sweat and there was a very strange ringing in his ears. But Ianto was looking at him, so he forced himself to speak. "I think . . . I think . . ."

The phone rang in his office upstairs. Jack managed not to vent a sigh of relief, but it was a close call and he didn't think he'd fooled Ianto. "I think you should hold that thought." He swung his legs out of bed.

"Jack," Ianto said in exasperation.

"It's noon on a Sunday, Ianto. Whoever's calling probably has a very good reason. Give me ten minutes." Or ten years. Or, better yet, _never_.

Ianto sighed and fell back into bed beside the Doctor. Jack climbed the ladder to his office without bothering to dress, and grabbed the phone just in time to save it from going to voicemail.

"Jack Harkness," he said.

"Captain Harkness," said an unfamiliar voice. It was an old man, speaking in a whisper. "You don't know me, but I'm Wilfred Mott. Donna Noble's grandfather."

Jack frowned. It seemed to be a morning for surprises. He hoped this one would be more pleasant, but he wasn't holding his breath. "I see. Mr. Mott -"

"Wilf, please."

"Wilf. How did you get this number?"

"The Doctor gave it to me. He said I should call it if anything ever started to go wrong with Donna's head."

"Donna's . . . head?" Jack blinked. He felt as though he were missing entire pieces of this conversation. "Wilf, the Doctor who gave this number to you - blue suit or brown suit?"

"Blue suit. He dropped by about, oh, must've been four or five months ago now. I was surprised; I didn't think we'd ever see him again after the way things ended for poor Donna. But that's what I’m calling about, Captain. The memory wipe, I don't think it's working any more."

 _Memory wipe?_ What the hell had the Doctor done? Jack's grip on the phone tightened. "Oh?" he said, forcing himself to speak evenly. "What makes you say that?"

"She's been having headaches, terrible headaches. They keep her in bed, she hasn't worked in weeks. She went to the doctor and they ran all sorts of tests but couldn't find anything. And then today," Wilf audibly swallowed, "today she turned to me and started speaking, normal as you please, except it wasn't English, it was some language full of clicks and pops that didn't sound like anything on this Earth. I said, 'Donna' and she blinked, and said, 'What?' like nothing had happened. Things are leaking through, and these headaches - she can't live with them. I hate seeing her in pain all the time. She's lost two stone."

Bloody hell. "That does sound serious," Jack said, attempting to sound reassuring. "Thank you for letting us know, Wilf. Donna is a friend, and we'll do our best to help her."

"Oh, thank you," Wilf said, sounding relieved. "Thank you. The Doctor said just that, that if Donna needed help you would do anything you could. Er," he hesitated, "tell me. Will you be ringing him up at all?"

"I don't know yet," Jack said, even as his fingers itched to dial the Doctor's number, just so he could order him back to Earth to clean up his mess for once. "I don't have all the information. I need to speak to some people - I should get back to you in the next forty-eight hours. If anything else happens -"

"You'll be first on my list," Wilf promised, "unless we have to call 999."

On that ominous note, Wilf rang off. Jack stood, arms crossed over his chest, thinking. Then he turned and lowered himself back down the ladder.

"Ianto wants us to buy a house," the Doctor said, before Jack had even reached the bottom.

"I know," Jack said, still with his back to them.

"He wants us to have a mortgage." The Doctor sounded like he couldn't decide whether to be horrified, terrified, or excited. Jack knew exactly which one he himself would choose. "And a garden."

"Possibly also a water heater that's bigger than a breadbox and a shower to go with it," Ianto said, sounding slightly exasperated. "Think of it, we wouldn't have to draw straws for who gets the hot shower, who gets the lukewarm one, and who gets to shiver at his desk till half-ten."

"But -" the Doctor began. He stopped when Jack turned to face them. Jack said nothing.

Ianto cleared his throat. "Who was that on the phone, Jack?"

Jack looked at the Doctor. "Wilfred Mott." The Doctor blanched. "Yeah, I thought that might be your reaction. Care to explain any of this, Doctor?"

"Who's Wilfred Mott?" Ianto asked.

The Doctor sighed and sat up. "Donna Noble's grandfather. You remember Donna, you saw her when the Daleks invaded. Red hair, big mouth, traveled with me. Well. The other me."

"I thought she was still traveling with other-you," Jack said. "At least until I was rousted out of bed by a phone call from her grandfather, who wanted to tell us that the _memory wipe_ isn't working anymore, she's got debilitating headaches, and today she looked at him and spoke in some alien language without realizing it. And you - _you_ -you, not him-you - stopped by months ago, gave him my number, and told him to call me if anything went wrong."

The Doctor closed his eyes wearily. "The memory wipe wasn't me. And before you get indignant," he added, opening his eyes to glare at Jack, "I want to make two points. The first: Retcon. The second: her brain was melting down. He could either wipe the knowledge and memories that were killing her, or he could watch her die. It wasn't a perfect solution, but it was the only one he had."

"And he couldn't have asked for help?" Jack demanded.

The Doctor shrugged. "No.” He fell silent, eyes distant. "I have often wondered what Rose had to say about it."

"Well, I guess we're going to find out," Jack said flatly. What a clusterfuck this was going to be, he could just feel it. On the other hand, it would get him out of an excruciating conversation with Ianto for at least a few more hours. "But none of that explains why you didn't tell us. You went to their house?"

He nodded. "When we were in London for the UNIT conference. There was an afternoon when you were both busy. I just thought . . . it wasn't much, hardly anything, but it was something I could do. It seemed to make Wilf feel better, if nothing else."

"What if one of us had tried to contact her?"

The Doctor shook his head. "You couldn't have. The other Doctor would have blocked all your numbers on her mobile and put a filter on her email. Besides, you all thought she was still out there." He nodded toward the ceiling. Then he lowered his chin and met Jack's eyes. "It wasn't perfect. Nor was it good. But before you condemn him, look me in the eye and tell me that all your solutions are perfect and good."

Jack gritted his teeth. Then, finally, he let all the breath rush out of him. "Fine, then. What's done is done, but the Band-Aid isn’t holding. What do we do?"

The Doctor threw the covers back. "We have to ring him. I can't do anything on my own, not without risking both our lives."

"You think he'll answer?" Jack said, hands on his hips.

"For this? Yes."

Jack said nothing. The two of them stood eye to eye, looking at each other. "All right, then," Jack said at last. "Get dressed. Work to do."

"Wait," Ianto said suddenly, in a rather plaintive tone. "Will one of you tell me what the hell is going on?"

***

Rose Tyler had never thought she’d feel old at twenty-three.

Of course, she'd also never thought she’d travel in time, fall in love with an alien, or leave her mother behind forever. But she’d done all these things and then some, and now . . . this was supposed to be her reward, her happily ever after. All of time and space and the man she loved.

Only, it seemed to her that rewards should feel a bit more . . . rewarding. This felt like work. Find a planet, save a planet. Lather, rinse, repeat. She wondered if Torchwood had left her jaded and cynical, or if she'd somehow ended up, well, _boring_. Her favorite days were the ones they went nowhere at all, where the Doctor tinkered while she sat in the jumpseat and painted her toenails. After three weeks back on the TARDIS, she decided that must be it - at twenty-three she'd already turned straight into her mother, and how humiliating was that? No wonder the Doctor flinched every time she touched him.

After five weeks back on the TARDIS, she realized she'd got it wrong. She’d changed, of course she had. Who wouldn't, after everything she'd seen and done? But she hadn't changed so much that she couldn't love this life again. That had been the whole point after all.

It was the Doctor who’d changed. She’d promised herself that when she finally found him, she'd snog the living daylights out of him. What she hadn't considered - what she'd never thought to consider - was that he might’ve become someone she didn't want to snog. Someone who didn’t even want her here, except she’d insisted and the other Doctor, the human one, had backed her up. Someone who could barely stand for her to touch him. Someone she suddenly had a hard time talking to.

She sighed, gazing down at her toenails. Bright red today, glistening like jewels under the lights of the console. Six weeks she'd given it. Perhaps it was time to admit defeat. There was no way back to her family in the other universe, so she'd have to figure something out in this one.

A mobile rang.

Rose looked up. It wasn't her mobile - she'd left it behind in the other universe and not bothered to replace it. It was a little black fliptop Nokia she'd never seen noticed before, lying out on the console. "Doctor?" she called. No answer. She peeked down through the grating to where he'd been doing repairs earlier. He was gone.

She flipped the phone open. T-WOOD, the screen read. It rang again, vibrating in her hand. Rose pressed the green button. "Hello?" she said.

There was a pause. "Rose?" a familiar voice said.

"Jack!" she said, unable to keep the relief from her voice. She’d hoped it was him. The Doctor hadn't said much about Jack, and Rose hadn't asked. It was enough to know that he was somehow, miraculously, alive and well. But now - well, if she needed a place to land for a while, Torchwood Cardiff might be an option. It would be familiar, at any rate. "Are you trying to reach the Doctor?"

"Yeah. We have a bit of a situation here."

"What sort of situation? Planets in the sky?" She slid off the jumpseat, mindful of her toes, and silently asked the TARDIS to help her find the Doctor.

"Not quite. More of a . . . Donna situation."

Rose froze. "Oh."

"Yeah. Did you know about that?"

"Yeah. More or less." He'd ordered her out of the console room when Donna had started melting down. He'd been so angry and so obviously frightened that she hadn't wanted to leave, but he'd not left her any choice. Later, once he'd taken Donna home, she’d tried to comfort him, but he'd snapped at her and shrugged her off. It had been the first sign that this Doctor was not the one she'd lost. She'd gone to her room and cried - for him, for Donna, and yeah, for herself. She'd tried so hard and sacrificed so much, and this was not how it was supposed to be.

"Her grandfather called this afternoon. Whatever the Doctor did, it's not working anymore."

She winced. "Got it. I'm not sure where he is - it might take me a couple minutes to track him down." She started peeking into the rooms along the corridor.

"How are you?" Jack asked after a few seconds' pause.

Rose hesitated, hand on a doorknob. Her first impulse was to shrug the question off, but this was Jack. "It's harder than I remember it being."

Jack was quiet. "A lot happened while you were gone."

"He won't talk to me." She peeked into the empty galley.

"I know." He sighed. "If you two come to Cardiff, I'll tell you what I know."

"Yeah? Thanks, Jack. I'd appreciate that. I guess we never got to have a proper chat or anything, did we? How are you?"

"I'm . . . I'm the best I've been in ages, actually." She could hear him smiling even over the phone. "I had a rough patch a few months ago, right after I saw you last, but -"

"A few months ago? How long has it been for you?"

"Eight months, just about. You?"

"Six weeks. I don't think I'll ever stop thinking that's weird. Hey, I think I found him." In the medlab, oddly enough. She could hear him in there, banging around. "Hang on, Jack. I'll be a just a minute." She hit the 'hold' button, and pushed the door open. "Doctor?"

His top half was buried inside one of the cupboards. "Bit busy here, Rose. Blimey, haven't looked inside _this_ cupboard in awhile."

"Doctor -"

"The dust bunnies' dust bunnies' have dust bunnies. Ah ha!" He pulled his head out of the cupboard and held up an odd little device in triumph. One of the aforementioned dust bunnies clung to his fringe. "Look at that. Knew I had one of these around here someplace. Now, sorry, what did you need?"

"The phone's for you. It's Jack." She held it out.

The Doctor blinked. "Jack? What, has Torchwood gone and got itself in trouble again? I can't be digging them out all the time. Earth has to grow up, Jack knows that. He can't just call me for every little invas -"

"He says it's about Donna."

The Doctor blanched. Rose shook the phone at him until he finally took it. His face was very blank. She tried to catch his eye, but he was already turning away. He'd done so much of that since she got back, she reflected sadly. Turning away, avoiding her eyes, babbling to cover up the fact that he didn't want to talk to her. He'd always avoided saying the hard things, but now he avoided saying anything at all.

"I'll just go change," she said, and left him alone in the medbay.

She went to her room, sat on her bed, and stared at her toes again for awhile. Then she got up, pulled a small duffel bag from the closet, and started packing. It took almost no time at all; she'd arrived with just the clothes on her back and never really found the time to settle in. When she was done, she set the little bag on the floor inside the wardrobe. If things went the way she thought they might, she wanted to be able to simply come in and grab it.

She exchanged her hoodie for a blue jacket, swapped her yoga pants for jeans, and, just to make herself feel better, put on a little make-up.

They were in flight when she got to the console room. The Doctor was throwing levers and bouncing from panel to panel, just as he always did. But Rose had watched him closely over the last six weeks, and she knew something was missing - some spark had gone out of his performance. "What did Jack say?" she asked, leaning in the threshold and holding on, just in case.

"Not much, said he'd tell me when I got there." He gave the console a good whack with the mallet, then tossed it aside. "Bloody annoying, really, he seemed to think I might not come. As if I'd leave Donna in that state - anyway, this just delays things, since now we have to go to Cardiff instead of heading straight to Cheswick, but I suppose the TARDIS could always stand to top up."

The ship gave one last shudder and came to a standstill. Rose pushed off the doorjamb with her hip. "Well, I'm glad to see Jack again, even under the circumstances. Last time, we barely had the chance to say two words to each other."

"Ah." The Doctor seemed to suddenly pull up short. He turned and looked at her for the first time since she'd handed him the phone. "Yeah. About Jack." He took a deep breath, rocked back on his heels, and rubbed the back of his neck. "I've been meaning to talk to you about him. See, the thing about Jack is, he can't die. Well, he can and does, a little too frequently if you ask me, but he always comes back to life."

Rose stared. "Wait, _what_?"

The Doctor's eyes cut away. "Jack's immortal. He can die but he can't stay dead. Sorry I didn't tell you sooner. It just never seemed to come up."

Rose swallowed, hard. "But - but that's horrible."

The Doctor shrugged. "That's just Jack. He's a Fact, a fixed point. If time is a stream, he's a boulder. If it's a rope all tangled up, he's a big, fat knot. An impossible thing, our Jack. He must be pushing two hundred now, unless he's spent time off the slow path I don't know about."

Rose couldn't seem to blink. Two hundred? _Jack?_ "But was he always like this? Even while we were traveling?"

"No, he was mortal then."

She shook her head. "But when did it change? I thought he died on the Game Station."

"He did," the Doctor said, in a curiously flat voice. "You and the TARDIS brought him back to life. Except you overdid it."

Rose felt her knees weaken. Her hand went to her mouth. "No, that's not - that can't be true." The Doctor said nothing. His eyes were focused somewhere to left of her head. "Oh God."

The door to the TARDIS swung open suddenly. "Hey, Doc," Jack said, removing his TARDIS key from the lock. "Right on time for once."

The Doctor spun on his heel to face him. "Of course I am. Five minutes, I said, and five minutes it is. _For once._ Are you impugning my driving?"

"Always," Jack said with a grin. He looked at Rose and his smile widened. "Hey there, Rose. What," he added, when she didn't move, "no hug?"

"Jack," she said. "I . . ." She swallowed. Her head was spinning. There was a very real possibility she might be sick. "How do you not hate me?"

Jack frowned. "Hate you? Why would I - fuck." His gaze swung to the Doctor. "You bastard. You _told_ her? Just now? You - no." Jack shook his head. "I have no words left for you. Go." He pointed at the door. "The Doctor and Ianto can fill you in on Donna."

The Doctor raised his eyebrows. "Are you throwing me out of my own TARDIS?"

"Yes," Jack snapped. "On account of you're either an idiot or an asshole, and either way I have no use for you."

"I beg your -"

"Beg all you want, it won't work. Get out."

The Doctor looked as though he were about to argue, but something in Jack's face must have changed his mind. "Fine," he said stiffly. "But don't think you can make this a habit." He stalked out, letting the door swing shut behind him.

Jack turned back to her. "Rose," he said, holding out his arms. "I'm so sorry you found out like this. Come here."

She shook her head. "Is it true, then?"

He nodded. "Yeah." Apparently seeing that she wasn't going to come any closer, he closed the distance between them and took her in his arms. He kissed her temple. "I'm impossible, the Doctor says. Or wrong, depending on how he's feeling."

Rose swallowed. She let her head fall forward to rest against Jack's shoulder. "And it's my fault."

"No -"

"Yes," she insisted. "God, Jack, how can you comfort me? How can you even look at me? The Doctor said you die, again and again, he said you're two hundred years old and you just . . . keep going."

Jack stroked Rose's hair. "Closer to two thousand, actually, though there's a lot of it I don't remember. But that's the gist of it. And yeah, it sucks, and there was a time I probably would’ve hated you, as much as I ever could, which is to say . . . not very much. Because you, Rose Tyler," he pulled away enough to look at her, forcing her to meet his eyes, "are amazing, and I will never forget that you loved me enough to wish me back to life."

She looked at him. "I didn't know. I don't remember any of it, and I didn't know, or I'd never have let the Doctor leave you behind."

"Hush. Water under the bridge for me."

She shook her head. "How can you say that?"

He cupped her face in his hands. "Because I have a lot of practice. All right?" She swallowed hard and nodded. "Now. Are you okay? You didn't sound like yourself on the phone."

Rose bit her lip, hard. She would not cry. She absolutely would not cry. She was Rose Tyler and she was tough, and oh God, Jack was looking at her so kindly, as though he already understood, and there was just nothing for it. She blinked, but all that did was make the tears spill faster. "Oh Jack. It’s been horrible. I came all this way and it's - he's - I don't think he even wants me here. I told myself," she had to stop and swallow, "I swore to myself that if I ever got back to him, this time I'd get it right. I wouldn't let months go by, thinking we had all the time in the world. But I can't - he won't even _look_ at me, much less touch me."

Jack sighed. "Oh sweetheart." He pulled her closer. "It's nothing to do with you, all right? You have to understand that. It's like I said - things happened while you were gone. Terrible things, some of them, and then what happened with Donna . . . I think it might've been the proverbial straw."

"I know," she said, closing her eyes and leaning against him. "I know he's hurting. But that just makes it worse, because I want to help him and he won't let me.”

He kissed her forehead again. "It's going to be all right. We'll sort Donna and we'll sort you, whatever that means."

She sighed. "It might mean I need a place to stay for a while."

"Just say the word." Jack put his arm around her shoulders and gently steered her towards the door. "But don't give up just yet, all right?"

She nodded, slipping her arm around his waist. "Yeah," she said, wiping the tears away with the sleeve of her jacket. "Not yet."


	3. Chapter 3

The Doctor hadn't known what to expect when - if - he ever saw his Time Lord twin again. Quite truthfully, he hadn't thought it'd be an issue; it’d have been easy enough for the other Doctor to avoid Cardiff for the next forty years, after which time the situation would likely be a moot point. But he should have known, he reflected ruefully. The universe had rarely been kind when he was a Time Lord. Why should it be any different now that he was human?

The TARDIS was on the Plass. The Doctor could see her on the CCTV, but he couldn't hear her, and he should have been able to, at this distance. Perhaps if he were inside . . . yes, then he could probably hear her. Even his human companions with greater innate psychic abilities had been able to hear her on some level when they were inside.

A cup of tea appeared in front of him. The Doctor blinked at it, then looked up at Ianto. "Are you all right?" Ianto asked quietly.

The Doctor accepted the tea and then shifted over so Ianto could sit beside him on the sofa. "Not quite the quiet Sunday we'd planned, is it?"

Ianto rested a hand on his knee. "If it was, it wouldn't be Torchwood. And you didn't answer my question." The Doctor shrugged. Ianto rubbed his knee. "Should I call Gwen in, do you think?" he asked after a moment.

The Doctor shook his head. "Not yet. She doesn't know Donna, and I think," he sighed, "there are going to be quite enough dissenting opinions as it is." He let his head fall to rest against Ianto's shoulder. "You really want us to buy a house?"

Ianto's head tilted to rest against the top of the Doctor's. "Yeah. I really do."

The Doctor swallowed. "What if I don't want to?"

Ianto was silent, briefly. "I think I'd ask why you didn't want to and go from there."

The Doctor nodded. "I - it's not that I don't want to, it's just . . . "

"It's just that the idea horrifies you and fills you with inexplicable dread?" Ianto suggested dryly.

The Doctor blinked. "Yes. How did you know?"

"Because I watched Jack have an identical reaction this morning." He sighed. "It's all right. I didn't really expect anything else, knowing the two of you. But I'd like it if we talked about it anyway. It's important to me."

The Doctor nodded. "And we will. Just, probably not today," he added as the lift activated. He and Ianto simultaneously lifted their heads and watched it descend, until they could see that it was the other Doctor, clad in his usual brown pinstripes and red trainers. He was alone - no Jack or Rose.

"Blimey," the other Doctor said as he descended. "Jack's built a proper Batcave down here, hasn't he?"

"Bloody hell," Ianto muttered.

The Doctor grimaced. The other Doctor's inadvertent echo of his own words upon seeing the Hub for the first time was strange, to say the least. "I know. This is going to be weird."

"You don't say," Ianto said dryly, with one last glance at him before rising to go greet the other Doctor. The Doctor sighed and followed suit. "Doctor," he said, putting his hand out. "Ianto Jones. I don't believe we've met in person."

"Ianto Jones," the other Doctor returned, shaking his hand even as he looked around. "Of course. Jack always spoke highly of young Ianto Jones of the Perfect Cup of Coffee." He turned his gaze back on Ianto. "He and Rose will be along shortly, I imagine. They're having a bit of a reunion. Now, where is - ah. Yes." His gaze landed on the Doctor and sharpened. "So. What are you calling yourself these days?"

"The Doctor," the Doctor said quietly.

The other Doctor frowned. "No, but seriously. We can't both be the Doctor and my name is unpronounceable. You must have a name for all those little bits of paper humans think are so important."

The Doctor lifted his chin. "John Noble."

The other Doctor nodded. "John Noble. Good name. That'll -" He stopped. Then he sniffed, and a look of horror came over his face. "Really, now. _Both_ of them?"

Though it was no less than he'd expected, the Doctor stiffened. "Not one word from you," he hissed.

The other Doctor appeared unconcerned. "Well, really, it just seems greedy. Not to mention excessive."

"Shut up," the Doctor snapped. "You left me here, without asking me, without asking Jack, if either of us wanted it. Neither of us did, not that it matters now. But you don't get even one word of commentary about the life I've created here, with them. Yes, _both_ of them." He reached out and grabbed Ianto's hand, lacing their fingers together and holding tight. He could feel his single human heart beating double-time in his chest.

The other Doctor rocked back on his heels. "Yes, well . . . that's hardly the matter at hand, is it? Let's not get sidetracked. Tell me, Ianto, John, what do you know about the situation with Donna?"

The Doctor let Ianto fill the other Doctor in. They had a bit more information now - Jack had contacted the hospital where Donna had her tests done and lied through his teeth to have her results faxed over. The scans looked like the machines had malfunctioned, though the technicians swore otherwise. Her brain was lit up like a Christmas tree, with activity in parts that humans simply didn't use. The Doctor had stared at them and sighed, wishing that Martha were not in Nicaragua.

The other Doctor demanded to see the scans for himself. Ianto went off to fetch them, leaving the two of them alone. The Doctor stared straight ahead, gritting his teeth, even as he felt his Time Lord twin scrutinizing him.

"I thought you'd change your hair," the other Doctor said at last. "Or your name. Or even your shoes. The green shirt's a nice touch, but really, how much of a difference does that make? You've even got a sonic screwdriver." He plucked it out of the Doctor's pocket without so much as a by-your-leave. "Not a very good one, mind you, but I suppose it gets the job done."

The Doctor was pleased that he managed to take his screwdriver back without punching the other Doctor across the jaw. "It does. And I have changed. You just can't see it. In fact, I reckon I've changed more in the past eight months than you have in the last thousand years. I don't expect you to understand. I didn't, when I was you." He frowned, fiercely. "But I do expect you to be respectful of me and the choices I've made. It's my home and they're my choices."

The other Doctor rocked back on his heels. "You're honestly saying you don't want to be me, then."

The Doctor snorted. "No. I do not want to be you." It was even mostly true. His heart did ache a little, with the TARDIS so close and yet so far. But he wouldn't trade his life with Jack and Ianto even for her, now.

Well. Probably not. He was secretly glad he would never be forced to make that choice.

The other Doctor smiled, but there was a brittle, hard quality about it that made the Doctor tense. "Brilliant. Then you won't mind me calling you 'John.' Ah, Ianto!" He dashed over to the autopsy bay, where Ianto was just emerging, scans in hand. "Let me see those." He popped his spectacles on and looked at them, nodding and muttering to himself. "Yes, yes, the frontal lobe, of course, and the amygdala, too, oh dear, no wonder she has a headache . . ."

The lift activated. Relieved at the distraction, the Doctor glanced up to watch Jack and Rose descend. Now that was interesting, he thought. Jack had his arm around her, almost protectively. And if he wasn't mistaken . . . no, he wasn't, he realized as they drew closer. Rose had been crying.

"Rose," Jack said, taking her by the hand as they stepped off the lift, "I'd like you to meet Ianto Jones. Ianto, Rose Tyler." The two of them smiled at each other and exchanged pleasantries. "And of course you know the Doctor."

"John, for the duration, actually," the Doctor said, even as the other Doctor opened his mouth. "Less confusing for everyone." Jack's eyes narrowed.

"John Smith?" Rose asked with a smile.

"John Noble, actually.”

Her smile faltered. "I see."

"Ianto," Jack said, letting go of Rose's hand, "why don't you show Rose around the Hub? You can start with the interesting bits," he added with a smile. "Rose worked for Torchwood in the other universe."

"Of course, sir," Ianto said, stepping forward. Rose smiled gamely. "So, Ms. Tyler -"

"Rose, please."

"Rose. Have you ever met a pteradon?"

Their voices faded as Ianto led Rose up the ladder towards Myfanwy's perch. Jack turned to face them. "Right, then," he said. The Doctor recognized the set to his jaw and winced inwardly as Jack ruthlessly caught and held the other Doctor’s gaze. "You're damn lucky there's a crisis brewing, or I would have a hell of a lot to say right now on the subject of Rose."

The other Doctor frowned. No, the Doctor corrected himself - he scowled, almost petulantly. "I don't see how it's any of your business."

Jack stepped forward into the other Doctor's personal space. "It is when you use me to try and push her away. If you don't want Rose on the TARDIS, you need to tell her. Stop jerking her around. She's been through enough."

The other Doctor glared. The Doctor knew he was uncomfortable with having Jack so close, but he didn’t look the slightest bit ruffled. "Are you quite finished?"

Jack laughed shortly. "Not nearly. Let's get a few things straight here, Doctor. One, you aren't in charge at Torchwood. I am. That means you don't get to call the shots. You did before and now here we are. Second, you don't get to judge us. Any of us. Including and especially," Jack's mouth tightened, "John."

"You know, John and I already did this number," the other Doctor said, irritably, and this time he did step back. "I don't think I much appreciate your tone, Jack. I did what I had to, to save Donna's life. And you don't get to judge me for it, either. I know what you've done here, the last hundred years. The good _and_ the bad."

Jack's face darkened. "I did the best I could."

"So did I!"

The confession startled both of them into silence. The other Doctor snapped his mouth shut and turned away, arms crossed over his chest. Jack stared at him, a muscle in his jaw working. The Doctor eyed them each in turn, and decided to let the silence stretch a little. When nearly a minute had gone by, he stepped forward, putting himself physically between them. "We understand you felt you had to do what you did," he said quietly, to the other Doctor. "But we won't let you keep making other people's choices for them. It's not right."

The other Doctor looked away, his expression bleak. "Even when they choose death?"

"So you admit it," Jack said, a strangely brittle quality to his voice. "You did it without her consent."

The other Doctor drew himself up. Even eye-to-eye, he managed to appear as though he were looking down at Jack. "It's no worse than your Retcon."

Jack lifted his chin. "You're supposed to be better than that."

The other Doctor took a deep breath. The Doctor braced himself for whatever devastating rejoinder he had planned. But then, suddenly, he sagged. He looked weary and old. He looked . . . defeated. "I know. But she was dying, Jack. What should I have done?"

It sounded like he genuinely wanted to know. The Doctor glanced at Jack, hoping he’d treat the question with the seriousness it deserved. To his relief, Jack sighed. “I don't know," he admitted. "What's done is done, I guess. We can’t change it. All we can do is try and help Donna.”

The other Doctor nodded. “Thank you,” he said after a moment, “for ringing me and letting me know.”

Jack shrugged. “It was nothing.” He glanced at his watch. “Let’s take this into my office. It’s been nearly two hours since I spoke to Wilf. I’m worried we might be running out of time.” Jack turned to lead the way. The Doctor waited to bring up the rear, not quite trusting his Time Lord twin to follow otherwise.

"So," Jack said to the other Doctor, once they were all seated in his office, "do these scans make any sense to you?"

He crossed his arms over his chest. "Well, of course they do. Question is, what's to be done about them. Donna's brain is burning itself from the inside out, and it shouldn't be, not after I locked the memories away."

"Locks can be picked," the Doctor said quietly.

Jack frowned. "What do you mean? You think someone has done this deliberately?"

The two Doctors exchanged a glance. The other Doctor set his jaw stubbornly and said nothing. "Yes," the Doctor said at last, when he realized that no amount of silence would force him to speak. "I thought the odds of something like this were high. That's why I went to see Wilf when we were in London. This sort of psychic work - it should be done over a matter of hours, with a willing subject. What did you have," he asked the other Doctor, "seconds? A minute at most?" He nodded shortly. "And Donna fought you every step of the way." Another nod, even more terse.

"But that doesn't explain who's picking the lock," Jack said, frowning. "Or why. Who has something to gain by Donna remembering?"

"Don't be thick, Jack," the other Doctor said impatiently. " _Donna_ has something to gain. A whole slew of memories and a universe of knowledge."

"She might not know it," the Doctor added, "but she's like me, she's got a human's curiosity with a Time Lord's analytical abilities. And she wasn't stupid to begin with. My guess is that she's been wiggling away at the gaps in her memory ever since she woke up in Cheswick."

The other Doctor nodded. "We have to stop her. There's no other choice. I need to get her in the TARDIS, but after that, I just need time."

"So that's it?" Jack said. "That's the only solution, to just do the same thing but better?"

"Her brain is _melting down_ ," the other Doctor snapped. "She's human with a Time Lord's knowledge and it's going to kill her if I don't lock it away. What part of that don't you understand?"

"But why is it happening to her and not to the Doc - to John, then?" Jack demanded. His gaze swung to the Doctor and his eyes widened. "Or will it?"

"No, no," the Doctor assured him. He laid a hand on Jack's arm, squeezing and rubbing firmly. "Donna and I, we're alike in some ways, but completely different in others. She has a human brain. Mine is half-human, half-Time Lord. Hers can't contain the knowledge. Mine can contain most of it, and the bits it can't have truncated themselves automatically. It won't happen to me, I promise you."

Jack relaxed, fractionally. "I still think there must be a better solution."

"There isn't," the other Doctor said.

A strained silence fell as the two of them stared stubbornly at each other. The Doctor cleared his throat. "There might be, actually." The two of them looked at him, Jack hopefully and the other Doctor skeptically. He deliberately focused on the other Doctor; he didn't much care to see Jack's face when he made this suggestion. "I have some psychic ability still, enough to help repair damage from trauma and the like. I helped Jack a few months ago. If you let me, I think together we might be able to do more for her than you could alone."

"No," Jack said.

"Jack," the Doctor sighed.

" _No._ You can't let him," Jack told the other Doctor. "He helped me, but it almost killed him. He was in a coma for four days. You can't let him do this."

The Doctor frowned. "It's my life to risk. Donna was my best mate, too. If we were inside the TARDIS and the Doctor did the majority of the work, the danger would be minimal."

Jack shook his head. "No. _No._ "

The other Doctor was watching them both with open curiosity. "He's right," he said to Jack. "The danger wouldn't be as great. It's still not without risk, but it might just be -"

"- worth it," the Doctor finished. "Yes, I thought so."

Jack put his head in his hands. "Ianto will hate it."

The Doctor nodded. "I know. That's why I wasn't planning on telling him."

Jack raised his head. " _What?_ "

"We have the TARDIS. We'll go to London and get Donna and take her into the vortex. We'll be gone five minutes, relatively speaking."

Jack snorted. "If I had a nickel for every time I've heard that . . ." He shook his head. "You should tell Ianto."

"No point. It'll only upset him."

Jack opened his mouth to argue, then grimaced in frustration when the phone rang. "Hold that thought." He picked up the receiver. "Jack Harkness."

The Doctor turned away to look at his twin. "Do we have a plan, then?"

"So it seems," the other Doctor said. "And you were wrong, you know. You haven't changed a bit. You've just adapted."

"That's not -"

"If you'd really changed, you'd tell Ianto."

The Doctor snapped his mouth shut, but was saved from having to answer when Jack hung up. "That was Wilf," he said. "Donna's gotten worse. They went to wake her for dinner and she wouldn't respond. Her mother wants to take her to hospital, but Wilf has convinced her to wait for us."

The other Doctor stood. "Right, no time to waste, then. He won't be able to fend Sylvia off for long. Are you ready?" he asked the Doctor.

The Doctor stood. "As I'll ever be."

He turned to follow the Doctor out, but Jack caught his arm and pulled him back to kiss him firmly on the mouth. He rested his forehead against the Doctor's. "Be careful," he said softly. "Come home in one piece, do you hear me? Don't make me explain this to Ianto."

The Doctor kissed him. "Don't worry. Everything will be fine." Jack huffed a quiet laugh and let go of his arm. The Doctor gave him a bright smile, and followed his twin down the stairs, out of the Hub, and across the Plass to the waiting TARDIS.

His nervousness built steadily as he approached the ship. What if he was wrong? What if he couldn't hear her at all? Logically, he knew that this was unlikely; if he had enough psychic ability to share dreams and repair psychological trauma, then he had more than enough to hear the TARDIS. And yet . . . he couldn't know until he was inside.

The other Doctor took no notice. He left the door open behind him as he strode in, throwing his coat over a strut with a careless gesture. The Doctor took a deep breath and stepped over the threshold.

He was right.

The other Doctor was speaking, his usual constant, meaningless prattle, but the Doctor didn't care. The TARDIS's song was filling his head, welcoming him home. He went weak-kneed and found himself sitting on the grating. His face was wet.

He slowly realized that the other Doctor had fallen silent sometime in the last few minutes. He looked up and caught him staring, face inscrutable. "Missed her, did you?" he said.

There was no point in lying. "Yes," the Doctor admitted, hoarsely.

"And yet," the other Doctor said, gratuitously throwing a lever, "you claim you don't want to be me. I find that hard to believe."

The Doctor didn't reply. He reached out and pressed his palm to the nearest coral strut.

***

Ianto had heard a handful of things about Rose Tyler over the years. She was beautiful; she was compassionate; she loved the Doctor enough to cross universes for him; she had been the one to make Jack immortal, in a series of events Ianto was not entirely clear on.

What Jack and the Doctor had both failed to mention was that Rose Tyler was as sharp as a tack.

Ianto noticed this immediately. Her eyes took everything in and filed it away. She was not intimidated by Myfanwy, nor was she particularly impressed by the alien equipment in the autopsy bay. She reacted to Ianto's steady stream of information with nods and occasional hums of agreement or inquisition that gave away very little.

Eventually they fetched up in the kitchen, where Ianto made coffee for them both. He'd glanced up at Jack’s office when they'd surfaced from a quick turn through the archives, but Jack's door was still shut. "So," he said, handing Rose a steaming cup, "Jack mentioned you worked for Torchwood in the other universe. What was that like?"

She shrugged. "Not so different. Interesting, dangerous. My dad - well, he would've been my dad in the other universe if I'd ever been born - joined up after the Cybermen invaded, and now he's chairman of the board. We - they - are mostly privately funded, though some of the big projects get government grants."

"And what did you do?" Ianto asked, seating himself across from her.

"Field work, mostly." She smiled ruefully. "Turns out I'd become something of an adrenaline junkie traveling with the Doctor. Field work kept me from going mad while I was looking for a way back."

"It is rather addictive," Ianto agreed. "I started out as a researcher, and then I became an archivist. Jack decided I should start spending more time in the field, and now - well, it'd be hard for me to go back." She nodded, eyes sliding away to take in the rest of the kitchen. Ianto followed her gaze, suddenly noticing the chipped tile and the faded, peeling paint. The color scheme obviously hadn't been updated since before either of them was born. "This probably isn't what you're used to," he said, suddenly a little embarrassed. It sounded like Rose's Torchwood had been more like Torchwood One - shiny and sleek.

"No, but it's homey," Rose said, with a decisive nod. "It feels lived in."

Ianto decided to take that as a compliment. "Funny you should say that. Jack does live here, in a room under his office. I keep a separate flat, and technically the Doctor lives with me, but Gwen's the only one who ever really goes home."

Rose glanced up at him. "I see. So tell me, then. Which of you is sleeping with Jack, you or the Doctor?"

Ianto blinked, slightly taken aback by her straight-forwardness, but decided to answer like with like. "Both of us, actually."

Rose appeared, if anything, amused. "Together or separately?"

"Together, most of the time."

"Huh." She got that glazed-over look that Gwen sometimes got when the the three of them came up - like she was picturing it in her head and liking what she saw. "Well done, then. I'm glad you've had more luck with your Doctor than I've had with mine."

Ianto winced. "He can be stubborn."

Rose grinned, but it looked a little weak to Ianto. "Who, him? Nah."

"I imagine we've got it easier. I think becoming human softened our Doctor up a bit."

"Hmm." Rose sipped her coffee, then lowered it and wrapped her hands around the mug. "Mine used to be more like that. My first Doctor - sorry, do you know how it works with him?" Ianto nodded; everyone at Torchwood One had been given a thick dossier on the Doctor at the end of their probation period, and it had included information on all known regenerations. "Right. Well, he could be . . . hard. But he wasn't usually cold. Not to me. With other people, yeah, because he didn't trust easily, but never to me. And now," she sighed, "I just don't know what happened."

"The Year That Never Was," Jack's voice said from the doorway. Ianto glanced up. Jack leaned there, hands in his pockets. "The Doctors just left. Wilf called again - Donna's gotten worse, so they took the TARDIS to London to get her. They said they'd be back in five minutes but -"

"- we all know how that goes," Rose said with half a smile.

"Exactly. Is there any more coffee?" Jack asked hopefully.

"Just about enough for one cup," Ianto said, and stood to get the milk out of the fridge and the sugar out of the cupboard. Jack was perfectly capable of making his own coffee, of course - well, once it was brewed - but it was a little thing Ianto liked to do for him. He set a new pot to brewing once he was done; if this conversation went the way he thought it might, they would all need it.

"Thanks," Jack said, pulling him in for a kiss before accepting the mug. He'd taken a seat next to Rose, who watched the two of them with obvious interest.

"Do you want me to leave?" Ianto asked.

Jack caught his hand. "No. Stay." Ianto nodded and took his seat again. He kept Jack's hand in his, beneath the table.

"What was - sorry, what did you call it?" Rose asked.

"The Year That Never Was." Jack drew a deep breath. "It's exactly what it sounds like - a year that never happened. Time was reversed. I remember, the Doctor remembers, Martha Jones remembers, and so do a handful of other people who happened to be in the right place at the right time."

"Or the wrong place," Ianto muttered. Jack squeezed his hand.

Rose's eyes flicked back and forth between the two of them. "I . . . see. Or I think I'm starting to. What happened during this year?"

Jack looked down at his hands. "A lot of death. A lot of pain. A lot of feeling helpless." He drew another deep breath and, in very blunt terms, told the story. He went into more detail than he ever had previously with Ianto, though it was still mostly the gaps and silences that told the real story. It was the places where Jack’s phrasing became almost glib, Ianto reflected, that the deepest pain dwelled.

"And then the Master died. Shot by Lucy, poor woman." Jack paused to take a deep gulp of coffee. His hand, which had held Ianto's tightly throughout, loosened its grip a little. "I think out of everything, that was the worst for the Doctor. He'd still thought he could save the Master. He wanted so badly not to be alone anymore. He mourned him. Fiercely. Not that he let Martha and me see it,” he added, with a brief, bitter laugh. “But we knew. I think we both tried to understand, but after everything that bastard had done to us . . ." He stopped, swallowed. “Martha Jones is one of the most compassionate people I know, but even she ran up against her limits there. She left him after that. I came back here. Maybe things would be different if one of us had stayed, but neither of us could."

"Yeah. I get it now." Rose shook her head. "I'm so sorry, Jack. I'm sorry that happened to you, and to him. I wish I'd been there, maybe I could've -"

"Don't say that," Jack said, voice suddenly low and ferocious.

Rose blinked. "What?"

"That you wish you'd been there." Jack shook his head. "You have no idea, Rose - you've no idea how many times I thought about how much worse it would've been if you were there. It was different with Martha. The Master used her to get to the Doctor; he'd sit for hours, describing all the horrible ways his Toclafane had supposedly carved her up. But the Doctor wasn't in love with her and the Master knew it. If he'd ever gotten his hands on you, the things he would've done . . . " Jack's voice broke. "Be grateful you weren't there."

Rose nodded. "All right. I'm sorry. I didn't think. But I wish," she bit her lip, "I wish I could've been there afterward. Maybe it wouldn't have been so bad for him. Or you."

Jack smiled. "It was okay for me. I had something - someone - to come back to." Jack closed his eyes briefly, and when he opened them again he looked almost like his usual self. "Anyway, there you have it. That's what I know. Other things might've happened, but if so, neither Doctor has told me."

"Well," Rose sighed, sitting back, "that does explain things a bit, but it doesn't tell me what I should do."

Jack grimaced. "Let's just wait and see for now. Helping Donna might help him, too."

"Speaking of which," Ianto said, tapping his fingers on the edge of the table, "is there a plan? Or are they just making it all up as they go along?"

"Bit of both, I think," Jack said, fiddling with the handle on his coffee mug.

Ianto snorted. "Shocking." He glanced at his watch. "Well, whatever it is, it's taking a lot longer than five minutes." They'd been sitting there for nearly an hour already.

"Oh, that's just the Doctor's driving," Rose said, waving her hand. "It doesn't mean anything."

"I must say," Ianto said, "I'm rather surprised that the Doctor - Rose's Doctor - took our Doctor with him. I thought if he took anyone it’d be you, Jack. I didn't think they much liked each other."

Jack frowned. "I don't think liking each other has much to do with it. The Doctor's never much liked himself. But I do think they understand each other. You saw the way the Doctor - our Doctor, God, this is confusing - defended him this morning."

"True," Ianto conceded. "They didn't say anything more about what they were planning once they picked Donna up?"

"Not specifically."

Ianto waited, but Jack didn't elaborate. Ianto narrowed his eyes, suddenly deeply suspicious. It took a moment for the conscious part of his brain to catch up with the unconscious part; when it did, he realized Jack was continuing to fiddle with his coffee mug, as though - as though he were _nervous._

Jack was an extraordinary liar. Ianto knew of three occasions when Jack had lied to him without the slightest suspicion on Ianto's part at the time, which meant it had probably happened at least an even dozen times. What he had never before seen was Jack lying to him badly. Jack knew what the two Doctors had planned and was lying to Ianto about it - but he wasn't invested in the lie. But then why would he do it to begin with? Unless . . .

"Out with it," Ianto said flatly. "What doesn't the Doctor want me to know? Our Doctor," he added, just in case Jack decided to play dumb. Jack opened his mouth. Ianto held his hand up. "No, wait, let me work it out. It has to do with their plan to help Donna. Donna's ill, there's something wrong with her brain because of the memor -" Ianto's hand came down hard on the table. Rose jumped. "Son of a _bitch_."

Jack sighed. "For the record, I told him to tell you."

"Did you also tell him _not to do it_?"

"Of course I did," Jack snapped. "I told both of them it was a bad idea. They insisted it would be fine if they did it together and in the TARDIS."

Ianto crossed his arms over his chest. "Do you believe them?"

Jack threw his hands up. "I don't know. The TARDIS is psychic and she has a connection to the Doctor. She might have a connection to Donna as well, through the part of her that's him. It's entirely possible the TARDIS will keep everyone safe, just like they promised. But this is our Doctor. He's got the self-preservation instinct of a suicidal lemming."

"Er," Rose spoke up. "Someone fill me in?"

Tersely, Ianto told her what had happened when the Doctor had helped Jack, finishing with, "And so now _our_ idiot has run off with _your_ idiot to try and fix Donna's brain, apparently not caring one whit if it kills him! And he lied to me about it."

Jack smiled weakly. "He said it would only upset you."

"Ha," Ianto said mirthlessly. "I'll give him upset. I'm going to kill him."

Rose cleared her throat. "I wouldn't take it personally. This is sort of just what he does."

"No," Ianto growled. "It's what he did. Things are supposed to be different now.” He sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I reckon there's nothing to do but wait and hope they know what they're doing."

Jack put a hand on his shoulder. "Unfortunately."

Rose stood to put her mug in the sink. "In the meantime, is there a loo around here?"

"Up the steps and to the left," Jack said, pointing towards the kitchen door.

"Thanks." With one last sympathetic smile in Ianto's direction, she disappeared.

Ianto let himself sag, his head falling onto Jack's shoulder. Jack held him loosely, arms around his waist. "So," Ianto said at last, "what are the odds of Rose Tyler coming to work here at Torchwood?"

"Better than even, I'd say," Jack said, breath brushing Ianto's ear.

"Gwen would be thrilled," Ianto said. "I know she misses having another woman around." It'd been getting a bit strange, too, with the three of them in a relationship. Though come to think of it . . . "Er. Are you going to want to sleep with her?"

Jack pulled away to look at him. "You've gotten much more direct lately." Ianto shrugged and raised an eyebrow. Jack smiled ruefully. "Well . . . yeah. I'll probably always want to sleep with Rose. That doesn't mean I will." Ianto nodded, satisfied. Jack frowned. "You're not angry with me? For lying to you?"

Ianto snorted. "No. I know how well you lie, and you were so terrible at it this time that I can only assume you buggered it on purpose. I am angry with the Doctor, but the truth, much as I hate to say it, is that I'm going to be so relieved if he comes home unharmed that I'll probably forget about it. Remind me, will you?"

Jack laughed softly and kissed Ianto's temple. "If I remember myself."

The Rift alarm chose that moment to begin wailing. Ianto groaned. "Seriously?"

"So it seems," Jack said, pulling away and heading for the stairs.

Rose met them just as they emerged from the kitchen. "What's that noise?" she asked, voice pitched to carry over the sound.

"Rift alarm," Ianto said, shutting it up with a few keystrokes at his workstation. "Something's just come through."

"Where?" Jack asked, leaning over his shoulder.

Ianto raised his eyebrows. "The Plass, actually."

Jack straightened. "Well, that's convenient. Want to come along?" he added to Rose.

"You know I do," Rose said, tucking her scarf into the neck of her jacket and zipping up in anticipation of the chill outside. "Any idea what it is?"

Ianto had the CCTV footage of the Plass up and was doing a visual scan. "Not yet. Wait. There." He pointed to the screen. Three shadowy shapes were perched amongst the gulls on the guardrail that kept pedestrians from toppling into the water. They were much bigger than the gulls, about the size of a large bird of prey. They had the hunched look of winged creatures, but their features were otherwise oddly blurred. Ianto craned his head around to look at Jack. "Know them off the top of your head?"

"Afraid not," Jack said. "Rose?"

"Nope."

"Right, then." Jack took his Webley from his desk, loaded the chamber, and shoved it into its holster. "Let's lock and load. What kind of weapon do you want?" he asked Rose.

She didn't hesitate. "A stunner and something deadlier. Do you have any energy weapons?"

"Here," Ianto said, holding out his spare stunner and a small but lethal 45th century blaster that had come through some time ago. "Do you know how to use them?"

She powered the blaster up easily. "Seems so."

"Excellent. Game on, boys and girls." With almost manic cheer, Jack led the two of them up through the tourist office entrance. Usually Ianto found Jack's performance grating under these circumstances - it was not necessary to be quite so gleeful about walking headlong into deadly peril - but under the circumstances he could sympathize. "Five minutes" had become fifty, and they had no idea when the Doctors would return. A minor Rift emergency might be just the diversion they needed.

It was gray and drizzly on the Plass, and there were very few people about. The ones who were there seemed not to have noticed the three creatures crouched on the railing. They did look remarkably like birds of prey, save for the blurriness Ianto had noted on the CCTV.

"Perception filter?" he asked Jack in a murmur.

Jack shook his head. "I don't think so. I think this is something cruder, probably natural camouflage. Stay with me, both of you."

Ianto echoed Rose's nod. With open water at the creatures' backs and open Plass on either side, there was no way to sneak up on them. They were just going to have to walk up and introduce themselves.

Or so Ianto assumed, until one of the creatures let out an almighty screech and launched itself straight at them.

"Whoa!" Jack shouted, Webley coming up. The creature was flying low and fast and on an unmistakable collision course with Rose. Jack stepped swiftly out in front of her. "Hey, let's talk before you -" Jack broke off with a choked, slightly strangled noise as the creature buried its talons in his chest and threw him aside with strength completely out of proportion to its size.

"JACK!" Rose shouted, and then yelped as the creature turned its attention on her again. The other two had launched themselves as well, Ianto saw in his peripheral vision, gliding around to flank the leader. Rose dropped into a crouch, covering her head and neck with her arms. Ianto raised his blaster and fired, once, twice. One of them screamed and dropped to the ground. The other two reeled back and around, talons open and reaching for Rose's head. But Rose had her own blaster out by then; at the sight of it, the remaining creatures backwinged. They climbed upward and circled, calling to each other.

Ianto pulled Rose to her feet. She had a long, deep scratch across her cheek. "Help me get Jack inside,” he said.

"Right," she said breathlessly, and took Jack's feet, whilst Ianto took his shoulders. Ianto went back for the dead creature; it was surprisingly light. He carried it with one eye on the sky, and so he was watching when the sky slit open and five more of them slipped through.

"Shit!" he muttered, and dove for the door to the tourist office. He slammed it shut and deadbolted it, just as one of the new arrivals winged by. "Five more," he told Rose, who knelt on the floor with Jack's head in her lap. He peered out cautiously through the curtain and saw three of the remaining creatures on the ground, only a few feet away. They were staring at the door with unblinking focus. Up close, they were more reptilian than avian, with red eyes and spines all the way down their backs. He couldn't see the other four, but he could hear them, circling overhead.

He looked over his shoulder at Rose. "I think we're surrounded."

"What do you think they want?" Rose asked, looking up at him.

Ianto shook his head. "I don't know. Hopefully Jack will."

Rose looked down at him. "He looks so . . . dead."

"He is,” Ianto said, crouching down beside them. “But he’ll wake up. Probably before too long - that wasn't so bad, as deaths go."

As if on cue, Jack gasped himself awake. "Ow," he muttered, pressing a hand to his chest. "Ribs aren't quite done yet." He looked up at Rose, who stared down at him with her mouth hanging open. "Hey there, sweetheart. No harm done." He pushed himself upright. "Where are we?"

"Trapped, it seems," Ianto said. "They're swarming the Plass. But I did get you a present while you were out." He gestured to the dead creature lying on the floor of the tourist office.

Jack broke out in a grin. "Excellent. You always know what I like." He flipped open his wrist comp and used it to scan the creature. He frowned at the results. "Let's get it down to the autopsy bay. It might not be here for long."

Rose blinked. “Why not?"

"Because according to this," Jack said, with a tight smile and a gesture at his wrist comp, "that creature doesn't really exist."


	4. Chapter 4

"Donna?"

Donna blinked her eyes open. "Doctor?" she mumbled, not yet awake. Then she blinked again, thinking she was seeing double. But no, that didn't make sense, because one of of the funny-looking blokes hovering over her was wearing blue and the other was wearing brown. But they were both skinny and bug-eyed with ridiculous hair.

The two blokes exchanged a look. "How's your head?" the one in blue asked.

Donna frowned. "Fine," she said in amazement. "It's fine. Wait. Who the hell are you?" She looked around at the gleaming white room, so similar and yet so very different from the hospitals she'd frequented in the previous weeks. "Where the hell am I?" The two blokes exchanged another look. "Stop that, right now, and tell me where I am!"

"You're on the TARDIS," the one in the blue suit said, to the obvious annoyance of the one in the brown suit. "And you know who I am - er, who we are. You just said it."

"You're the Doctor," she replied instantly, then gasped. "Why did I say that? I've never seen you before in my life."

The bloke in the brown pinstripes seated himself by her bed. "You have, actually. Many times. You lived in the TARDIS for months. We traveled together."

She glared. "I lived here. With you. For months." He nodded. "But I don't remember it." Another nod. She snorted and sat up, pushing Brown Suit away with a firm hand to the sternum. "Not bloody likely. I don't know what game you two are playing, but I'll have you up on charges so fast it'll make your head spin! Where's my mobile?"

The two of them exchanged another one of their _infuriating_ looks. "Brings back fond memories, doesn't it?" Blue Suit said.

Brown Suit rolled his eyes. "What a day that was."

"OI! GIVE ME MY MOBILE!"

"All right, all right!" Blue Suit said. He produced her mobile from a suit pocket. Donna snatched it out of his hand and clutched it to her chest. "But it won't work in here. We're not on Earth anymore."

"We're not on _Earth_?" Donna snapped. "Where are we, then, Mars? Next thing you'll tell me is you're both Martian!"

"We're not Martian," Brown Suit said. "But we're not human either."

Blue Suit sniffed. "Speak for yourself."

"Look, we're getting side-tracked here," Brown Suit said, hands on his scrawny hips. "You're in the TARDIS. That's my ship. Something bad happened while you were traveling with me and I had to erase your memories. But they're leaking through now, and they've been hurting you."

Donna frowned, another sarcastic retort on the tip of her tongue. But something made her stop. Possibly the lack of pain in her head. She pressed a hand to her temple. "But you fixed it, didn't you? The pain's gone."

They exchanged another look. "The pain's gone," Blue Suit said, "but you're not fixed. Your grandfather called us - well, a friend of ours - when you started to get worse. You were on the verge of a complete neural meltdown when we arrived."

"That . . . doesn't sound good," Donna said shakily.

"No." Brown Suit cocked his head to one side. "How do you think we stabilized you?"

Donna opened her mouth to ask how the hell she should know, but that wasn’t what came out. "You introduced a synapse inhibitor, followed by a neuro-specific analgesic, which, judging by the effectiveness, was probably keyed to my DNA." She clapped a hand over her mouth. "How did I know that?"

Brown Suit sighed. "You know that because _I_ know that. Or would know that, if I were you. Or -"

"Oi! What the hell are you talking about?"

Brown Suit opened his mouth, but Blue Suit got there first. "It doesn't matter," Blue Suit said. Donna and Brown Suit both scowled at him. "It doesn't," he insisted. "All that matters is that we can fix you. We can help you, Donna. We _will_ help you."

She crossed her arms over her chest. "Will I get my memories back? Of traveling in this - this - blimey, is this really a space ship?"

"And a time ship," Brown Suit said, smiling. "You met Agatha Christie."

"Shut up. I did not."

"You did."

"I met Agatha Christie and I don't remember it," she said faintly.

"You did other things, too." Brown Suit shook his head, eyes shining with some strange, soft light. This man loved her, Donna realized with a sudden jolt. He wasn't in love with her, and thank God because she just didn't _do_ aliens . . . but he loved her, deeply. "You were magnificent."

She swallowed. "Well, then. Seems like that might be worth remembering, yeah?"

Blue Suit nodded. "Yeah. But you have to trust us. Can you do that?"

Donna didn't answer right away. She didn't know either of these men, she told herself. This might all be a scam, though what they could possibly want from her, she didn't know. But it didn't feel like a trick. And . . . they had stopped the pain. For that alone, she thought she might do anything they wanted.

"Yeah," she said at last, nodding. "I can do that."

Brown Suit smiled. "Brilliant. Lie back, then. You, too," he added to Blue Suit, pointing to the cot beside Donna's own. "If you're sure. I might be able to do it alone."

Blue Suit shook his head. "You ran the numbers yourself. The chance of success is three times as great if I'm involved. I'm sure."

Brown Suit nodded. "Okay." He picked something up off the counter and moved to Donna's side. He held up a funny little pointed tube. "This is a sedative. It will induce a trance state, similar to very light sleep. I'm going to inject all three of us with it. Once I do, we'll be able to connect with each other psychically, with the TARDIS acting as conduit. Donna, it's your mind we'll be focusing on, so it's up to you to provide us with landmarks, if you can. A hallway with doors is traditional. Shut the door on anything you'd rather we not see, but if it's relevant, we might have to re-negotiate. All right?"

Donna nodded. He pressed the business end of the tube - a _hypospray_ , her brain helpfully and rather creepily supplied - to her arm. There was a brief sting and a hiss. Brown Suit moved on to Blue Suit, while Donna lay back and closed her eyes.

When she opened them again, she was elsewhere: a hallway, white and gleaming, that stretched off into eternity with doors all along either side. She winced at the bright light, blinked her eyes, and found that the light had dimmed. It was more like sunlight now, filtered through sheer curtains, and she could see that the floor of the hallway was a deep, carpeted blue - the same blue as the TARDIS.

 _The TARDIS._ She remembered everything here. _Everything._

"Very nice," Blue Suit said from behind her. "Most people, it's all very institutional. I like this. It's comfortable."

"You," she said, pointing. "I remember now! Aren't you me?"

"Ehhh," Blue Suit said, rubbing the back of his neck. "Yeah, a bit. But I've got the Doctor's memories, so most of me's him, if that makes sense."

"Ah, yes," Donna said, in a tone that made Blue Suit flinch. "The Doctor. Where is he?"

"Right here," Brown Suit said. "Well, here we all are -"

Donna slapped him.

" _Ow!_ Blimey, that smarts." Brown Suit glared at her. "What was that for?"

"You know what that was for," she snapped. "I told you _no_. I said _don't take it away from me_ , and you bloody well did it anyway."

"Donna -"

"DON'T 'DONNA' ME!" she roared. "And now you expect me to let you muck about in my head? Well, think again, spaceman! Out!"

Brown Suit held his hands up placatingly. "Donna, I know you're angry, but -"

"I said, OUT!"

He set his jaw. "I can't do that, Donna."

She glared. He was here with her permission, and her permission could be revoked. She knew how to do it because he did. It was just a matter of raising mental shields between them, a task so simple any Gallifreyan child could do it. He yelped when he realized what she was doing, but it was too late. He vanished, leaving her and Blue Suit standing in the blue carpeted hallway.

"There," she said, turning to him. She dusted her hands off. "We don't need him, eh? We can do this. The DoctorDonna."

He blinked. "Yeah," he said. "'Right. DoctorDonna friends." He smiled.

She smiled back. "Exactly. DoctorDonna friends. Now, this way, don't you think? It feels like this way."

He shrugged. "It's your head. I'm just here to lend a hand."

"This way, then," she said decisively, and set off up the corridor.

It was far stranger than anything she could ever have imagined. The blue hallway faded in and out of existence, depending on whether they needed it, leaving them, at times, floating in the unfamiliar vastness of her mind. It was so much bigger and more terrifying than she had ever thought - there were whole worlds here that she didn't know had existed. Much of it she couldn't fathom, and even more of it was useless to her; those bits they simply locked away, reinforcing the crude work the Doctor had done. The math, though - the math she got to keep. A lot of it was pretty useless, too, but it was fun.

The further they went, the more pissed she got about what the Doctor had done to her. It wasn't the knowledge he'd taken that angered her, it was the memories - thousands and thousands of her memories, and he was right, she had been magnificent. "One slap isn't enough," she said, as they closed in on what she damn well hoped was the end of the hallway. "Not _nearly_ enough."

"You won't get any argument from me," the human Doctor said. He sounded exhausted. She glanced over and frowned; he'd become vaguely translucent.

"You all right there?" she asked.

"Yeah." He took a deep, steadying breath. "Just tired. It's harder for me to be here than it is for you."

She blinked. She hadn't considered that. She'd just assumed he could handle it as easily as the Doctor would, but of course he wasn't the Doctor. "Do you need to rest?"

He shook his head. "No. Let's keep going. Not much further now."

"Right. So," she said, examining the next door, "what've you been up to lately?"

"Oh, you know. This and that.” She glanced at him, eyebrows raised. “Working with Jack in Cardiff,” he added, rubbing a hand over his forehead. "Sorry. I'm not really up for small talk just now." He nodded at the next door. "What's behind this one?"

She put her hands on her hips. "About a million digits of pi, I think. What would I ever do with that?"

He shrugged. "I seem to do all right without them. Lock them away?"

She snorted. "Please. I can think of thousands of things I'd rather know. Literally." She closed her eyes and the hallway vanished; together they contracted the knowledge behind the door into a tiny pinprick of light. Donna took a deep breath, and when she exhaled the light was gone. It was still there, somewhere in her mind, but nowhere that she could access it.

The final door at the end of the hallway contained the knowledge Donna had most wanted to keep: how to fly the TARDIS. Together, she and the Doctor pared it to back to something that was still functional but wouldn't overwhelm her. It was painstaking, difficult work; neither of them spoke more than was necessary, and even Donna was feeling the strain by the end. It was a huge relief to feel the hallway beneath her feet again. She bent over, hands on her knees, breathing deeply, and finally straightened with a sigh. "There," she said. "Well done us, if I do say so my -" She broke off.

The Doctor was crumpled in a heap by the final door. He was barely an outline now, a pale ghost of his real self. "Yes," he said weakly, looking up at her. "Well done. You were brilliant."

She knelt beside him. Her hand, when she attempted to smooth his hair back, passed straight through him. Her heart - and her stomach - sank. "You were brilliant, too. Look, you go on, get back to your own brain. You'll have a good sleep and feel like new again, yeah?"

He winced. "I don't think so. I'm so sorry, Donna."

"Damn you both," she whispered in sudden, terrible understanding. She should have realized - the Doctor had asked him if he was sure, and he wouldn't have unless there was some reason he might not be. "Don't you dare do this!" She wanted to grab him and shake him, but she couldn't even touch him. She clenched her hands into fists until the nails bit into her skin instead.

"Please, Donna, listen," he said. His outline wavered, then stabilized. "I want you to remember two things for me, because I don't think I will. First, he did the best he could for you. He didn't have the luxury of time, and he's been punishing himself ever since. Forgive him, please, so he can forgive himself."

Donna gritted her teeth. "I'll think about it."

"The second thing . . ." He gasped a little, hand curling into a loose fist on the floor. "Tell Jack and Ianto I'm sorry."

"No," she said, shaking her head, "no, no, don't you dare!" It was too late. He melted into the floor and vanished.

She knelt back, looked around, and stood. "Well," she said aloud, "I guess there's no place like home." She clicked her heels together twice for good measure and closed her eyes.

When she opened them again, she was in the TARDIS medbay. Brown Suit was seated across from her, hands steepled in front of his face. "Is it done?" he asked.

"Yeah," she said, sitting up carefully. "It's done. But I think I did something terrible."

Brown Suit looked toward his twin. He hadn't moved; he was breathing, Donna saw, but he hadn't woken when she had. "It was his choice to stay. He knew the risks."

"I should have known."

He sighed. "There's a lot of that going around." He looked back at her. "Are you still angry with me?"

She rolled her eyes. "Don't start with the puppy eyes. I'm bloody furious with you, you prawn, and you _so_ owe me when all of this over. I want a week on a beach, fruity drinks with little umbrellas, cabana boys, the whole bit. But for now . . ." She looked over at Blue Suit and sighed. "Can you wake him?"

Brown Suit nodded. He stood, picked up another hypospray from the counter, and administered it. The two of them watched, silent; it seemed to take forever, far longer, Donna thought, than it should have. At last he stirred and opened his eyes, but he groaned and closed them again immediately, curling onto his side.

"Hey now," Donna said. "You can't go back to sleep just yet. Where does it hurt?"

"Head," he mumbled dully. "Light - please." Donna glanced toward the Doctor. Obediently, he reached over and dimmed the lights.

"Better?" Donna asked, stroking a hand through his hair. He nodded. "All right, then. Can you sit up?" He nodded again and pushed himself up on his elbow. "Slowly now," Donna said, helping him sit up the rest of the way. He swayed a bit, unsteady. "That's the ticket. Now tell me. Do you know where you are?" He shook his head. "That's all right," Donna assured him, even as her heart sank. "Do you know who I am?"

He looked up at her. "You're my friend. Donna."

"Yes," she said with a wide smile. Thank God. "That's very good. Do you know who this is?" she asked with a nod toward the Doctor.

He nodded. "That's the Doctor."

"Yes, good, that's me," Brown Suit said, nudging Donna aside. "Mind if I take a look inside your head?"

"Doctor!" Donna snapped. "Have you ever heard of tact?"

He rolled his eyes. "Yes, but it takes forever, and we don't have forever. It won't hurt," he added to Blue Suit. "In fact, you probably won't feel a thing."

Blue Suit looked at Donna, who tried to grimace in exasperation and nod reassuringly at the same time, and felt like she might've ended up pulling a muscle. She held his hand as the Doctor placed his fingers at the neural points on his temples. They both closed their eyes. Blue Suit’s face went serene, but Brown Suit frowned deeply.

"What?" Donna demanded.

He opened his eyes. His twin’s remained closed. "I don't know how to describe it. Something's snapped. No, that's not right. It was worn through. There's no connection left between the human and Time Lord parts of his brain."

"Can you fix it?"

He shook his head. "He might himself, eventually. For now, it seems like he's chosen his human side. His memory's like Swiss cheese, but he'll get by." He sighed. "He'll want to go to Cardiff, and I suppose I can't justify avoiding it. Jack's going to be exceedingly annoyed with me."

Donna put her hands on her hips. "Well, it's me he should be annoyed with, and I don't mind telling him so. Now, wake up Blue Suit here, so we can have a chat. It'll be easier if we know what we're dealing with."

Obligingly, Brown Suit snapped his fingers under the his twin’s nose. He opened his eyes. "Sorry," he said, a little vaguely, "must've drifted off."

"Not a problem," Donna said with a smile. "How’s your head?”

“Better,” he said. “Thank you. And I think,” he frowned, “I think I know my name. It’s - I think it’s John Noble.”

Donna smiled. He seemed to be getting better rather than worse, at least. "What a coincidence. My last name is Noble, too."

He returned her smile, hesitantly. "Is it? Are we related?"

Donna considered this. "A bit," she decided. "I'm like your sister, but not quite."

"What does that mean?"

"It means it's complicated."

He accepted that easily enough. He nodded and looked around the room, gaze brushing over all the various medical instruments, finally landing briefly on the Doctor before settling on Donna. "Where am I?" he asked.

"You don't remember?" she said.

He shook his head. "No. I just - it makes me feel sad. I really think I'd like to go home."

"Fair enough," Donna said. "Where's home?"

"Cardiff," he said, without hesitation.

"Cardiff it is then!" she said brightly. "The Doctor will take us to Cardiff right away." Brown Suit disappeared without a word. Donna frowned in worry at this uncharacteristically taciturn display, but shrugged it off to focus on the Doctor in front of her. "What's the last thing you remember from before you woke up here?" she asked him.

He frowned. "I - I don't - I don't know. I can't - I can't remember." He wrapped his arms around himself as though he were cold. "I can't remember," he repeated. "Why can't I remember? I should remember. I know I should. Why can't I?"

"It's all right." Donna put an arm around his shoulders and squeezed. "Something happened to you that made you forget. But the Doctor and I, we'll help you.”

He nodded. “And Jack and Ianto?”

"Yes, love, I’m sure they’ll help you, too. We'll see them in Cardiff. Hang on tight," she added, as the TARDIS suddenly bucked beneath them. She took her own advice and grabbed hold of the counter with both hands. "It's going to be a bumpy ride."

***

Jack was on the phone with Gwen when he heard the TARDIS materialize, to his relief. Gwen was cross with him for not calling her in sooner, and distinctly unthrilled with the prospect of entering the Hub via the utility ducts, now that they appeared to be held hostage by interdimensional vultures. At least that's what Jack was calling them, given their shape, the readings he'd gotten with his vortex manipulator, and the fact that the dead one had simply disintegrated on the autopsy table after five minutes. "Never mind," he said, "I think our way out - or your way in, rather - just arrived."

"I can be at the Plass in twenty," Gwen said.

"Fine, but stay back. I don't want you attracting the attention of those things." Jack rang off and took the stairs down to the main floor three at a time. Ianto and Rose appeared from the kitchen just as the TARDIS finished materializing. The three of them waited, watching its doors, but no one emerged.

After a moment Jack and Rose exchanged a glance, and Jack stepped forward to open the door with his key. "Doctor?" he said, poking his head in.

The Doctor - Rose’s Doctor - was standing by the console. Alone, it appeared, and disturbingly subdued. "Ah, good, Jack," he said, barely looking up. "Five minutes, like I said."

"Closer to five hours, actually, and we've got a bit of a situation here," Jack said, stepping inside with Rose and Ianto close behind. Ianto sucked in a breath as he got his first glimpse of the inside of the TARDIS.

The Doctor looked up and took in the other two. "Look at that. A welcoming committee."

Jack waited two beats, but it seemed that was the end of it; no more information would be forthcoming. "Well?" he prompted. "Did it work? Where is everyone? Doctor, we really don't have time to -"

"Donna's fine," the Doctor said shortly. He hesitated, long enough that Jack's blood ran cold. "John . . . will be fine."

Jack's jaw clenched. "I told you, I _warned_ you -"

The Doctor's head snapped up. "Yes, well, that didn't do much good, because it wasn't my decision. I could have protected him if I'd been there, but I wasn't."

"And just where, pray tell, were you?” Ianto asked, in a voice so even and civil the hair stood up on the back of Jack’s neck.

"Stop." Donna’s voice echoed in the small space. Everyone turned to stare at her. She looked just as Jack remembered her - brash and bold and beautiful - standing in the doorway with hands on her hips. "All of you, just shut up. It wasn't the Doctor's fault. It was mine. If you're going to shout at someone, shout at me."

Jack took a deep breath. "Donna, not that I'm not glad to see you, but where's the Doctor?"

"Right here," the Doctor muttered.

Ianto's head whipped around. " _Not you_."

"He's in the infirmary," Donna said, gently. "Physically he's fine, but psychically there's been some damage. It's my fault. I didn't let the Doctor help us."

"I . . . see," Jack said, and he was pretty certain he did. He let out a breath, reached out, and put a hand on Ianto's arm. Ianto's muscles were rigid. "Is he conscious?"

Donna nodded. "He's completely lucid, he's just . . . human. He thinks his name really is John Noble. He doesn't remember anything about being a Time Lord. He doesn't remember much, really, but if you ask him questions he doesn't have to think about, he can give you the answers. He was thrilled to hear that he'd be seeing you two soon."

"Can you fix it?" Jack asked. "Fix _him_?"

The Doctor shook his head. "Any further psychic interference would be . . . contraindicated."

“I see. Done enough damage, have you?” Ianto said icily.

"Oi," Donna said, "I did the damage, not him. But he's right. More interference is not the answer. We give it time," she answered, before Ianto could ask. "Time and familiar surroundings. He doesn't like being in the TARDIS. Home is the best place for him."

Jack sighed. It could have been worse, he reflected, and for once there were enough capable people around that he didn't have to put Torchwood completely ahead of his personal life. "All right. The Doc - _John_ is Ianto's and my priority. Rose, can you brief the Doctor and Donna on what's happening topside? We need to figure out what those things are and how we're going to deal with them. Gwen should be checking in soon. "

She nodded, spine straightening automatically. "Right, of course." She gestured toward the door, turning to lead Donna and the Doctor out of the TARDIS. "I think it'd be best if we did this in the autopsy bay so we have access to the test results. The Rift alarm went off approximately two hours ago, signaling that something had come through -" Her voice cut off as the door swung shut, leaving Jack and Ianto alone in the console room.

Jack looked at Ianto. "You all right?"

"It's bigger on the inside," Ianto said faintly.

Jack gripped his hand. "You've no idea. Come on."

The medbay was exactly where Jack remembered it. Or perhaps it was where the TARDIS knew he remembered it. They paused outside the door. "Trust me?" Jack asked Ianto.

Ianto raised his eyebrows. "Of course. Why would you even -"

"We'll get through this," Jack said, gripping his hand tightly. "Whatever happens -"

Ianto shook his head. "Don't promise that, Jack. We don't know what's happened to him. We don't even know who he is right now, and if the Doctor had a quick fix for it, he'd have done it already."

Jack sighed. "I know. But you and me, Ianto. No matter what."

Ianto nodded. "Thank you for saying so." He turned away and hit the control panel to open the doors.

They were barely inside the infirmary before they both had an armful of Doctor - _John_ , Jack forcibly reminded himself. "You're here," John mumbled, face buried in Ianto's hair. "Thank God. What's wrong with me? I can't remember anything."

Ianto rubbed John's shoulder soothingly. "From what the Doctor and Donna said, there's a lot that you remember, really. You remember Cardiff, and us, and Donna, and the Doctor -"

"No, no, there's so much so much - I tried to remember anything about my life, any details, and I couldn't. Nothing. Except . . ." John pulled away. He swallowed. "Except I remember the three of us in bed together, and something about a house. I wanted to buy a house. I remember that."

Jack glanced briefly at Ianto. "That was this morning. We were talking about the house just a few hours ago."

"I'm sorry," Ianto said, "did you say you _wanted_ to buy a house?"

Jack sighed. "Time and place, Ianto."

"I did," John said, nodding. He leaned, burying his face against Jack's shoulder this time. He was shivering a little. "Get me out of here, please," he mumbled. "I hate being here. It hurts."

"How so?" Ianto asked. His hand was stroking up and down John's back, traveling the length of his spine.

"I don't know," John said, sounding frustrated. "It makes my chest ache and I don't know why. Like someone I loved died and I can't remember them but I'm sad anyway. Like - like I'm homesick for someplace I've never even been." He pulled away suddenly and grabbed handfuls of his own hair. "I hate this. I can feel it, I can feel how much I'm missing, it's like this huge chasm in my brain. The synapses keep firing but there's nothing there. I hate it, I hate it, I hate it." He punctuated each reiteration by slapping his forehead with his open palm.

"Stop, John, _stop_ ," Ianto said, shooting Jack and alarmed look and pulling John’s hand away from his head.

John grabbed Ianto suddenly, framing his face in his hands. "You. Ianto Jones. I remember you. I was ill and you read to me."

Ianto nodded, the strained lines around his mouth easing just a little. "I did."

"You like your coffee black. You love sushi and you like theater, but you can't sit through a symphony. There's a place on your hip - if I touch it, your whole body shivers."

Ianto nodded. He raised his hand to stroke John's face. "All true."

John reached for Jack next. "You love the symphony. You like to get dressed up. White tie and tails."

"We have season tickets," Jack said, a bit roughly. "You and me." He donated a ridiculous amount of money to the Cardiff Philharmonic every year, just so he could go to their donors banquet. No one dressed up in this century; it didn't matter where they were going, everyone wore blue jeans. But one night a year, things were different. The Doctor had come with him this year as his date. Jack hadn't been able to keep his hands off him. Both their tuxedos had ended up a bit worse for wear, and Jack would have to significantly up his donation next year in order to get invited back.

John nodded. "I remember. Also, you - you like it when I'm rough. You hate reality TV."

Jack managed a smile. "Bad memories. What about you? What do you like?"

John shook his head. "I don't -"

"Don't think," Ianto suggested. "Just start the sentence with _I like_ and see what follows."

"I like marzipan," John said. His eyes widened. "I like the way Ianto makes my tea. I like days when the sun peeks out, like it could clear up any moment even though it's Cardiff and you know it probably won't. I like _possibility_."

Jack nodded. He leaned in and pressed a kiss to John's forehead. "Yes," he murmured. "That's you. A man who loves possibility."

John looked up, then suddenly was kissing him, fingers sliding into Jack's hair and holding him there. He kissed the same as ever, passionate and tender and always just a little careful, and Jack realized that this part of him had always been human. The Time Lord part had never known how to open up like this.

John let Jack go, but switched, almost seamlessly, to Ianto. Jack watched avidly, from inches away. He had always loved to watch the two of them, from the very first time, and watching them now steadied him, somehow.

Both were breathing hard when they finally broke apart. "I like that, too," John said.

Ianto laughed softly. "Good. I'm glad." He looked at Jack. "What do we do now?"

Jack took a deep breath. "Now, we go see what the others have found out about our visitors. John," he hesitated, "things are going to get weird. Do you remember what we do here at Torchwood?" John blinked and shook his head. "All right. Well, you don't need to do anything that makes you uncomfortable."

John nodded. "Thanks.” He drew a deep breath. “I - I think I’ll be okay.”

Jack exchanged a look with Ianto. "If you aren't, just tell one of us, all right? Don't try and get through it on your own."

Jack turned and led the way out of the infirmary, down the hall, and through the console room. He glanced back to see John staring straight ahead, as though he were afraid to look at anything, even out the corner of his eye. His left hand held Ianto's right in a white-knuckled grip that didn’t loosen until they’d finally passed out of the TARDIS and into the Hub.

Jack was so focused on John and Ianto that he almost didn’t hear the raised voices at first.

"Just say it, Doctor," Rose was saying. She wasn't shouting, but it’d have to be damn close for Jack to hear her from the autopsy bay. "You wish I'd never come here. You wish I'd stayed in the other universe."

"Do I wish you hadn't ripped holes in the fabric of reality just to get back to me?" the Doctor replied, voice high and harsh. "Yes, I wish that! I never thought you'd be so stupid or so selfish!"

"Whoa," Jack muttered and lengthened his stride, almost breaking into a jog.

By the time he reached the autopsy bay, the Doctor was in the midst of a full-fledged self-righteous rant. He and Rose glared at each other from opposite sides of the room, while Donna watched wide-eyed from the threshold. "I told you it was impossible," the Doctor said, hands on his hips. "Do you think I use that word for fun? Do you think that I liked admitting there was no way to get you back? No, but I did, because it was responsible. Do you understand that, Rose? Responsibility?"

"Don't you dare, Doctor," Rose snapped. "You have no idea what responsibilities I've had to bear."

"Shed them fast enough, didn't you?" the Doctor retorted. "Whatever you were up to in the other universe, it obviously didn't matter to you that much. You walked away from it all - your mother, your father, your brother, Torchwood -"

"For you!"

"I never asked you to!"

"How long have they been at this?" Jack asked Donna in a low voice.

"Long enough," she said. She stuck her fingers in her mouth and blew, resulting in an ear-splitting whistle that got everyone's attention, human and Time Lord alike. "That's enough, both of you."

There was a moment of silence almost as piercing as Donna's whistle. Finally, Rose shook her head and stepped backward. "All I wanted was to get back here, to you," she said, voice breaking. "I assumed . . . and I shouldn't have. I'm sorry if this is not what you wanted." She turned and walked away, head held high as she climbed the steps and disappeared into the Hub.

Jack took a deep breath. "Doctor -"

"The things on the Plass are scavengers," the Doctor said, not looking at any of them, "creatures of the void. Rose has crossed it dozens of times. She has void stuff - radiation - clinging to her. Those creatures are drawn to it. They're after her. But the longer they're here - well, the whole city is dripping in rift radiation, which is close enough to void radiation not to make much difference to a void vulture."

"What are you saying?" Jack asked, though he had a sinking feeling he knew.

The Doctor met Jack's gaze. "I'm saying that if they don't get what they came for, they're going to start consuming Cardiff stone by Rift-soaked stone."

"But they can be killed," Ianto pointed out. "We killed one on the Plass."

"No," the Doctor said, shaking his head. "More will just keep coming. I wasn't being hyperbolic when I said that Rose ripped holes in the fabric of space and time to get back here. That's how they're coming through and they're just going to keep coming, unless . . ."

"Unless what?" Donna asked. "Doctor, unless _what_?"

The Doctor shrugged, exhaustion writ large across his face and body. "I don't know." He rubbed a hand across his face. "I just don't know." He turned and walked away.

Jack exchanged a look with Ianto. "Go," he said, making a shooing motion. Jack squeezed John's hand before dropping it and following the Doctor.

Rose was nowhere to be seen on the main floor, but the Doctor was. He had his TARDIS key in the lock already. "Hey!" Jack yelped, and got there just in time to grab the door and prevent the Doctor from opening it. "Where the hell do you think you're going?"

"Nowhere," the Doctor said tiredly. “Did you really think I'd leave now?"

"I don't know, Doc. That's why I asked."

The Doctor leaned his forehead against the door. "Why does everything seem to assume the worst of me? I'm not leaving. I couldn't leave, none of you understand the danger you're in. Not just Rose. All of you. Right now it's fifteen void vultures on the Plass, tomorrow it could be fifteen hundred all across the whole UK."

"Don't worry, Doc, we'll figure it out. And hey, ask me how I know that."

The Doctor turned his head just to enough to look at him. "How?"

"Because we're smart people who know how to handle this sort of thing. You know what Ianto told me once?" The Doctor shook his head. "He said he wished I’d stop taking responsibility for everything. It’s insulting to the people around me. You don't need to take sole responsibility for this."

The Doctor set his jaw. "You don't understand. This was exactly the sort of thing my people prevented. It'd be the easiest thing in the world to fix if there were another Time Lord alive, but without one it becomes impossible." He thumped the side of the TARDIS with his fist. "I never thought - she knew not to mess about with things she didn't understand. I was sure I'd taught her that much."

Jack shrugged. "Love makes people do funny things, Doc." He leaned against the TARDIS and bent his head so it was very close to the Doctor's. "Deep down, you know this isn't her fault." The Doctor nodded, though he didn't meet Jack's eyes. "Tell me, Doc. Do you really want her to leave the TARDIS? It's okay if you do. But you need to tell her. I'll make sure she has as many options as she wants, but I can't do anything unless she asks me, and she won't ask me unless you say something."

The Doctor was silent for a long time. "I don't want that," he said, in a rough voice. "I never meant her to think I did. But I didn't - I can't - I'm _tired_ , Jack."

Jack smiled ruefully. "I know the feeling."

The Doctor lifted his head to look him in the eye at last. "Oh, Jack. I'm so sorry."

Jack shook his head. "This isn't about me. Look, maybe you need a break. Life on the slow path isn't all bad. Have you ever thought about staying in one place for awhile? You're always welcome here. You know that."

The Doctor looked away. "Am I?"

Jack grimaced. "We got off on the wrong foot earlier. But yes, you are." Not that it would be all sunshine and daisies, but if refuge was what the Doctor needed, Jack was happy to provide. It was certainly better than turning a burned-out Time Lord loose on the universe.

The Doctor sighed. "I appreciate the offer, but the slow path’s just never worked for me. And even if it did, which it doesn’t, that isn't why Rose came back.”

Jack cuffed the Doctor upside the head. "Don't be an idiot."

"I'm not -"

"You are, if you think traveling is the reason Rose came back. She came for you. She won't care where the two of you are, as long as you're together. But you have to talk to her before you can work any of this out."

The Doctor snorted. "Talking."

"Yes, talking," Jack said, more harshly. "We non-telepathic species have to do it on occasion. You might consider it crude and unseemly, but it's all we've got."

The Doctor sighed. "All right. I'll talk to her. After this is over."

It was the best he was going to get, Jack decided. "That's really all I ask." His earpiece beeped. "Hang on. Gwen?"

"I'm here," she said. "But I don’t see anything.”

"Look harder. Void vultures - that’s what we’re calling them for now - have a natural perception filter. There’s a bunch right in front of the tourist office.”

There was a beat of silence. “Oh. That’s - damn, there are a lot of them, aren’t there?”

“And more coming through all the time. Don't worry, I'll explain."

"You'd better."

"I'm on my way up to get you. Er . . . don't be alarmed." Jack rang off. "Mind if we take the TARDIS to get Gwen?" he asked the Doctor.

"Do I have a choice?" the Doctor replied, bemused. "Yes, yes, fine," he added, when Jack quirked an eyebrow at him. "This isn't your personal taxi service, you know. May I open the door now?"

Jack stood aside with a gracious _after you_ gesture. The Doctor rolled his eyes and led the way inside. He tossed his coat over a strut and bounded up to the console. Jack followed more slowly, and leaned against one of the struts, stroking it lightly in greeting. "Next stop, Roald Dahl Plass," the Doctor announced, throwing a lever. "Oh, and Jack?" Jack looked up, eyebrows raised. "Thank you."

Jack smiled. "Anytime, Doc."


	5. Chapter 5

Rose really wanted some fresh air. If she could have just stood on the Plass for a few minutes and felt the wind on her face, everything would have been better. Not all right, not good, but better.

As it was, she had to settle for splashing water on her face in the loo. She patted herself dry with a paper towel and slid down to sit on the floor with her head in her arms, wishing she could talk to her mum again. "Don't you listen to him," she heard her mother’s voice say in her head. "You know what he's like. Thinks he's King of the Universe, he does. It's your job to remind him he's not." Rose laughed tiredly and pulled herself off the floor.

She was prepared to face a whole pack of people when she emerged, but the Hub was eerily silent. The coffee machine was percolating in the kitchen so someone was about, but there was something missing . . .

The TARDIS was gone.

Rose couldn't help it. She made a noise like she'd been punched in the stomach.

"Oh no," Donna said, appearing in the doorway to the kitchen. She rushed to take Rose's arm and pull her over to the sofa. "No, no, no. He's a tosser, but he's not that much of a tosser." Donna paused. "Well, all right, he's exactly that much of a tosser, but I would've sat on him if he'd so much as thought about it. He and Jack just went to get Gwen."

"How do you know?" Rose asked numbly.

Donna smiled. "I eavesdropped shamelessly, that's how." She put her arm around Rose's shoulders. "He hasn't left without you, I swear."

Rose laughed, feeling halfway to tears at all this motherly attention. "Maybe he should. I'm nothing but trouble, apparently."

Donna snorted. "No one's more jeopardy-friendly than Himself, so I don't see how he's got a leg to stand on. Just because you were clever enough to figure out how to do it -"

"No," Rose said, shaking her head. "No, I just didn't know I shouldn't. I knew it was dangerous, but I didn't think it was dangerous to anyone but me. And now we're all trapped here with more of those things coming through all the time." She could see the CCTV from where they sat. There were at least fifteen now, and who knew how many more were circling overhead?

"Don't you worry," Donna said, patting Rose's arm. "We'll get the Doctor's head screwed on straight. Care for a coffee?"

Rose nodded, forcing a smile. "I'd love one, thanks."

"Come on, then. I think I managed to coax a decent pot out of the machine." Donna stood and led the way into the kitchen. Rose followed. "The way I see it," Donna went on, getting two mugs down from the shelf, "the blokes are all a bit distracted right now.” She pulled milk from the fridge and sugar from the cupboard. “So it's up to us to take care of these void vulture whatsits." She turned to grin at Rose. "Which is just as well, because you, Rose Tyler, are smashing, and so am I."

Rose smiled, more genuinely this time. "Thanks."

"Hard to remember sometimes, isn't it, with that lot."

Rose shrugged. "I never thought I was anything special until I traveled with the Doctor. And then I knew I was special, somehow, even when I was in the other universe, trying to get back. Now I _am_ back, and all of the sudden I just . . ." She shrugged and laughed, though it didn't feel very funny. "Stupid, I know, to base all my self-worth on a bloke. Thought I'd learned never to do that after my ex."

Donna sighed. "Well, it's the Doctor. He has a way of getting inside your head - sometimes literally - and not always in a good way. I should know. Here." She put a mug into Rose's hand. "Bring it along to the autopsy bay. I want to get a look at the energy readings Jack took with his vortex manipulator." She marched out of the kitchen.

Rose took her time adding cream and sugar to her coffee, then leaned against the counter for a minute or two, sipping slowly until she felt her head start to clear. She still felt frayed around the edges, but no longer as though she were about to unravel completely. There was something reassuring about Donna, Rose reflected, something very . . . the only word Rose could think of was _centered_. As though Donna knew who she was and what she was about and had no desire to be anyone or anywhere else. Rose wished she could say the same about herself, just then.

By the time Rose joined her, Donna was glued to a computer screen in the autopsy bay. "What've we got?" Rose asked, leaning over Donna's shoulder. She squinted; the readings were nothing but gibberish to her.

Donna pointed to the screen. "Jack's vortex manipulator is set up to scan for different types of energy. That's void radiation, there. As far as I can tell, these things are made of the stuff."

"Why don't they just stay in the void, then?"

"Mostly they do," Donna said. "But the Doctor was right. You must be dripping in it right now." Rose couldn't help it; she looked down at herself reflexively. Donna laughed gently and shook her head. "Don't worry, it's not obvious to anyone but them."

"Bad enough," Rose muttered. "So what do we do?"

"That's the million pound question, isn't it?" Donna turned to look at Rose over her shoulder. "What do you think we should do?"

Rose shrugged. "I don't know."

Donna poked her in the side. "Think about it. We've got tears in the walls of the universe. These void vultures are coming through because they're attracted to you. There are only two ways to put an end to this."

Rose frowned. Then, suddenly, she got it. "Oh. Of course! We can either mend the tear, or we can get rid of the energy on me. They'd have to leave then, wouldn't they?"

Donna grimaced. "I don't know. Rift energy is close enough once the bloody things are here, and frankly even Cardiff is nicer than the void. But I can think of a few ways we might get rid of them. Between us and Torchwood, we’d manage well enough.”

"Good enough for me," Rose said. She leaned against the desk and crossed her arms over her chest. "So which one's easier?"

"Neither," Donna said with a sigh. "The Doctor was right - mending the tear is almost impossible without a second Time Lord and TARDIS. Trying could end badly."

"How badly?" Rose asked, thinking of fifteen hundred void vultures feasting on all of Britain.

"Universe-ending badly." Donna shook her head. "I think our best shot is to try and siphon the void energy off of you. But that's risky, too. The best way to do it is to have the TARDIS create an electro-ionic containment field and use her own artron energy to pull the void stuff off you and send it back where it came from."

"Oh, is that all?" Rose said brightly.

Donna mock-glared. "Cheeky."

"Sorry," Rose said with a smile. "It's just - you sounded so much like him just then. How much did you keep, anyway?"

"Enough to be getting on with," Donna said, sounding satisfied. "Enough to mess with Himself's head, and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't looking forward to that. It'll be good for him," she added, with a somewhat evil smile.

Rose privately agreed and was about to say so when the sound of the TARDIS materializing filled the Hub. Despite Donna’s earlier reassurances, she felt a rush of relief. "That's them," she said, trying to keep her voice even. "Let's go tell them we have a plan."

"Wait," Donna said, catching Rose by the arm. "There are risks to forcibly removing the void radiation from you."

Rose frowned. "Like what?"

Donna grimaced at the computer screen. "I'd have to run some simulations to be sure, but off the top of my head . . . it could pull you apart on the subatomic level. Or you could be sucked into the void." Donna met her eyes. "Neither of which is a fate I'd wish on my worst enemy, much less the lover of my closest friend."

Rose swallowed. "And if we do nothing?"

Donna shook her head. “Not an option, I’m afraid.”

Rose let her breath out. "Right. No choice, then, is there?"

Donna hesitated. "There is one other, actually.”

Rose frowned. She had the feeling she wasn't going to like this. "What is it?"

Donna’s eyes were serious, her mouth tight. "As far as I can tell, the void vultures are coming through here and now for two reasons: you stayed long enough for them to detect you, and the Rift makes Cardiff a weak point between universes. Eventually they would have found a way through no matter where you were, but it happened in a matter of hours, rather than days, because of the Rift."

Rose could already see where Donna was going - and why she hadn't suggested it to begin with. "So you’re saying that if I kept moving, if I never stayed anywhere for more than a day or two at a time, and if I avoided places like Cardiff -"

"- then you’d be safe," Donna finished, nodding. "Yes. Exactly."

Rose swallowed. "And the Doctor and I - we'd be stuck together. Neither of us ever able to make the decision to leave. Never able to make the decision to stay." Donna nodded. "That's -" She broke off, shaking her head.

"I know," Donna said, reaching over to lay a hand on Rose's arm. "But it is by far the safest solution."

"He'd hate me," Rose said faintly. She could see it so clearly that she wondered if this was what it was like to be the Doctor, to see a timeline stretched out before her. It was awful. "He'd hate me for trapping him like that. I can't do that to us," she said, turning her hand over to squeeze Donna's. "Even if he didn't hate me, I'd always wonder if he kept me with him because he wanted to or because he had to." She shook her head. "There's no other choice."

Donna sighed. "The Doctor might think of something."

"Do you think he will?"

Donna hesitated. "No."

"Well, then." Rose consciously straightened her spine and lifted her chin. "This is what we have. It's better than ending the universe or letting Earth get eaten." Or trapping herself and the Doctor in an unendurable future on account of her own selfishness.

"The Doctor won't like it. I know he's a tosser, but he loves you."

Rose shrugged. She thought of bold, brash Donna, whistling fit to pierce an eardrum, and the way even the Doctor had looked at her, wide-eyed and a little awed. "Then you have to help me convince him. It's the only responsible thing to do." She looked away. There was a lump in her throat that wouldn't quit, no matter how hard she swallowed. "I punched holes in the walls of universes to get back to him. I didn't know the damage it would do, but I did it. I shouldn't whine now about facing the consequences. Will you help me?”

Donna nodded. "Yes. Of course." She crushed Rose to her in a hug. "I'm so sorry. I'll do everything I can, I promise."

Rose hugged her back, smiling even as she felt sick with nerves. "I know.” She pressed her face briefly into Donna’s shoulder before pulling away. “You know, he and I aren't really - we haven't ever - we're not lovers.”

Donna raised an eyebrow and turned to link arms with Rose as they left the autopsy bay. "Well, that's something else for us to work on, then, isn't it? Maybe after we've saved the world."

The TARDIS was tucked into a back corner, partially obscuring a cluttered workstation Rose suspected belonged to the human Doctor - the alien tech that littered its surface had the same ramshackle aesthetic as the TARDIS console. The door swung open and the Doctor emerged, followed by Jack and a dark-haired woman who had to be Gwen Cooper. She wore a rather shell-shocked expression.

"There and back," Jack said with exasperation. "How hard -"

"We were only gone fifteen minutes," the Doctor said, defensively.

"We weren't even supposed to be gone that long," Jack replied. "It didn't take two by my watch to collect Gwen, but somehow we were gone fifteen. Have you ever considered consulting the manual?"

"The TARDIS manual was written by a committee of unimaginative bureaucrats," the Doctor snapped. "And anyway, I can't consult it, because I threw my copy into a star about four hundred years ago. Now. Introductions. Gwen Cooper, this is Rose Tyler and that's Donna Noble. And this - where's John?"

"Gwen knows John," Jack said, with palpable patience. "She's worked with him for eight months."

"Wait," Gwen said plaintively, "who's - you mean the Doctor? Our Doctor?"

"Right, yes," the Doctor said. "Where is he?"

"Ianto was going to take him for a lie down," Donna offered. "He was feeling a bit overwhelmed."

Jack frowned. "I'd better check in with them. You two,” he added, pointing to the Doctor and Donna in turn, “try not to disassemble the Hub while I’m gone. Gwen, with me. I need to brief you."

Jack and Gwen disappeared up the stairs and into Jack’s office. Rose glanced at the Doctor; his usual mania seemed to have evaporated, leaving him looking every inch of his age. Then, suddenly, he transformed, turned to them, and put his hands on his hips, rocking back on his heels with a wide grin. "So! Donna, you look like a woman with a cunning plan. What did you come up with?”

Rose let Donna do the talking. Rose watched the Doctor, looking for the tiny cues that would signal his reaction. There weren't many, but Rose had made something of a career out of Doctor-watching, once upon a time. She didn’t expect him to be surprised; if she and Donna could come up with it, then he could, too, probably hours ago. She expected anger, even rage. He would fight her on it, she thought. Or - and she considered this possibility a distant second - he would be quiet, mournfully resigned to both their fates.

What she never expected was _enthusiasm._

“Yes, yes, good!” the Doctor said, nodding vigorously once Donna had finished. “Exactly what I was thinking myself - but you’re me, after all! Easy enough if you know what you’re doing, which of course I do. We’ll need Jack, though. Where did he get to?”

Rose was glad Donna was there to answer, because she couldn’t seem to get her throat to work. As it was, Donna gaped at the Doctor for several seconds before answering. “He went up to his office with Gwen, remember? He was going to check on John and Ianto.”

“Right, right,” the Doctor said. He spun on his heel toward the staircase. “I’ll just get him and we’ll be off!”

“Whoa there, spaceman,” Donna said, snagging hold of the Doctor’s jacket. “Give them a few minutes. We don’t have to leave right this second. Jack’ll be down when he’s ready.”

The Doctor blew out a breath. “Well, all right, if you insist. In that case, I have preparations to make.” He spun on his heel again and headed back to the TARDIS.

“Can we help?” Rose managed to ask.

“No, no, best if I do this alone. Don’t worry, Rose, everything will be fine. _Allons-y!_ ” he added, before stepping inside the TARDIS and shutting the door firmly. Rose stared at it, blinking rapidly.

Donna sighed. “Sometimes, I could just about kill him,” she said conversationally. She reached out and took Rose’s hand. “You know he’s not as blasé as he seems. He’s only this mad when something’s really bothering him.”

“Right,” Rose said, hollowly. “Sure.” Donna was right, she told herself. But that didn’t change the fact that she had hoped for something from the Doctor besides empty reassurances. She’d thought he might at least hug her. She wanted him to, badly.

Donna pursed her lips sympathetically. “Come here, love.” She pulled Rose into her arms. Rose leaned her head on Donna’s shoulder and squeezed her eyes shut. “He might be an alien prawn,” Donna said into her ear, “but he’s your alien prawn.” Rose gave a watery chuckle. “Jack and me, we’ll help you through this, and then the three of us’ll get him to see reason. If anyone can do it, we can.”

Rose smiled. “Right,” she said. “Thanks.” Privately, she was less sure, but she didn’t want to shatter Donna’s optimism. It might be the only way any of them would survive this.

***

Jack’s bathroom was tiny. It smelled like mildew and there was a single bare bulb hanging from the ceiling, which was cracked. John could see all of this from where he sat on the floor, scrunched into the nook between the wall and the tub. He had his knees pulled up to his chest, with his arms looped around them, and he was wondering what would happen if the crack continued its progression all the way across the ceiling and down the wall. Would the whole thing cave in eventually or would it just rain plaster down, bit by bit, until someone finally fixed it?

There was a quiet knock at the door. "John?" Ianto's voice floated through. "Are you all right?"

John blinked. He’d come in here to wash his face, he recalled. Probably some time ago. He wasn’t entirely sure how he’d ended up on the floor. “Yeah,” he replied, hauling himself to his feet. He ran the hot and cold taps, splashed water on his face, and patted it dry with a towel that smelled of Jack’s aftershave. He leaned against the sink, the heel of his hand pressed against the bridge of his nose, until he finally felt able to move.

He hung the hand towel up and went out to the bedroom, where he found Ianto sitting on the bed. "Better?" Ianto asked, looking up at him.

John shrugged. "A bit." He let Ianto take his hand and pull him down onto the unmade bed. “Sorry about before. It was all just a bit much, with the shouting and then the - the aliens.”

Ianto chuckled. “Actually, that’s a good description of Torchwood. Shouting and aliens.” He kept John’s hand in his own. "Do you want to talk? I can answer any questions you might have. Though if you have questions about the Doctor, you're probably better off asking Jack."

"I don't," John said quickly. He didn't want to know much about the Doctor. The idea made him very uneasy. "But I was wondering - could I kiss you again?"

Ianto's eyes softened. "Of course." He put his hand on the back of John's neck, sliding his fingers into the short hair there, but let John be the one to close the distance and kiss him. John's mind quieted at once. He slid his arms around Ianto's waist and splayed his hands over the small of Ianto's back. Ianto hummed and traced the shell of John's ear with his thumb. A frission of arousal shivered through John.

He pulled an inch or two away and bumped Ianto's jawline gently with his own, leaning their foreheads together. This close, John could feel Ianto's stubble rasping against his, the heat of his skin, the gentle brush of his breath against his neck. "I love you," John murmured.

Ianto went very still.

John frowned, pulling away. "Ianto? Did I say something wrong?"

Ianto shook his head and tugged him closer again. "No, not at all. It's just . . ."

"What?" John asked anxiously.

Ianto looked away. "You almost never tell me you love me.”

John blinked. "I . . . really?" Ianto nodded. "But that doesn't - I love you. I know I do. I _remember_ ," he added, suddenly beyond anxious, because if he couldn't trust his memory that much, he couldn't trust it at all. Things could be worse, he realized. Things could be so much worse.

Ianto hastened to reassure him. "You do. I know you do, you just never say it. Neither does Jack."

John frowned. "Do you?" Ianto shook his head. "Why not?"

Ianto gave him a small, embarrassed smile. "Think about it. Being the only one in a three-way relationship who ever says _I love you_?" He shrugged. "It's all right. I don't need the words. You both show me in all the ways that matter. And it's better than it used to be with Jack. I never used to know where I stood with him. You forced him to tip his hand. That was really all I needed."

"But that's -" John stopped. _Horrible_ , he wanted to say, but that wouldn't get them anywhere. "I don't understand," he said instead. "Why don't I say it?"

Ianto shrugged. "I don't know. Too domestic, maybe."

"I . . . see." He didn’t. John frowned. He remembered falling in love with Ianto; specific events were fuzzy, but the actual sensation of it, the swooping feeling in the pit of his stomach, he could recall with no trouble at all. He couldn’t imagine not wanting to tell Ianto he loved him. "I guess I’m just a bit . . . not myself right now.” He looked up. “Do you know what happened to me? What's wrong with me?"

Ianto nodded. "I don't know how it happened, but I think I'm starting to understand what happened."

"Tell me," John said quietly.

Ianto hesitated, looking away as though trying to organize his thoughts. "The Doctor's an alien," he said at last. "He's a Time Lord. He's very old and very powerful. You came from him, somehow - that's why you look alike. You had all his memories and most of his knowledge, but your body is human. Right now, as far as I can tell, you're the part of you that isn't him."

"So what I feel and how I act," John said slowly, "that's how I am without the - the alien parts."

Ianto nodded. "I think so."

John cupped the back of Ianto's head. "The part that keeps me from telling you I love you - that's him, then. That's not me."

Ianto shook his head. "You are him, most of the time. I'm not sure it's that easy."

"I think it is." John leaned their foreheads together again. He felt Ianto let out a shaky breath. "I love you."

"I love you, too," Ianto said, and then suddenly he was kissing John again, pushing him back to lie amidst the wrecked bedcovers. The sheets smelled of the three of them, John realized, of their skin, sweat, and musk. He had a sudden, disorienting flash of memory, of going down on Ianto in this bed just this morning: the way Ianto had tasted and felt on his tongue, soft and hard at the same time, and the way Ianto’s moans and Jack’s uneven breathing had mingled, filling the small room. John felt his whole body flush, and Ianto just kept kissing him, until he was dizzy with how familiar this was, how very much this felt like coming home.

At last Ianto pulled away. He tucked John's head into the crook of his neck. "I meant what I said," he whispered. John made a querying noise. "I don't need the words. I know you both love me." He sighed, and when he spoke again his voice was lower, barely a whisper. "But it is nice to hear."

Someone knocked on the ceiling. John startled. Ianto sighed and turned his head. "Yes?"

The trapdoor swung open and Jack dropped through. "You disappoint me," he said. “I was hoping to catch you both naked.”

Ianto rolled his eyes. He propped himself up on one elbow. "What's going on?"

"Gwen - do you remember Gwen?" Jack asked John. John nodded. "Good. Anyway, she's here. The Doctor seems to think Donna and Rose will have a solution to the void vultures soon. That means I might have to be out of touch for awhile, and I want to check in as a team before I leave. Take your time," he added with a wink, and turned to go.

"Wait," John said, sitting up. Jack turned back, eyebrow raised. "Jack -"

"John, don't," Ianto said, putting a hand over John's mouth.

Jack's eyebrows went up even further. "What's this about?"

"Nothing," Ianto said. John made a muffled, protesting noise. "Nothing, Jack, really. We'll be right up."

"Right," Jack said, hands on his hips. He didn't look like he believed Ianto for one second, but he climbed the ladder up to his office with only a single backward glance.

Ianto removed his hand. John frowned. "What did you do that for?"

"Because you were about to try and get him to say he loves me," Ianto said a low, exasperated voice. "Am I right?"

"Well, yes," John admitted. "But -"

"But nothing." Ianto raked a hand through his hair. "It won't help. It'll make him feel trapped, and we don't want that. Take my word on it." He sat up and straightened his cuffs, then buttoned the top two buttons of his dress shirt. "Why do you think I told him I had a dentist's appointment so I could meet with an estate agent about a house?"

John frowned. "You told me that, too." Ianto shrugged. "But I want to -"

"No, you don't," Ianto said flatly. "Well, maybe you do, but the part of you that’s the Doctor doesn’t. Neither does Jack. It's all right," he added, when John opened his mouth. "Everyone makes compromises in relationships. These are the ones I've made. I hope I can eventually talk you into a house, but I'd rather live in this hole in the ground with you than in a palace without you." He straightened his tie before starting up the ladder.

John watched him go. Then he got up and went to stand in front of the mirror on the back of the bathroom door. He sorted himself out much as Ianto had, then held the eyes of his reflection, unblinking. He was sure that even now Ianto, Jack, and Gwen were working on a way for him to get his memories back. The question, which no one had thought to ask because it hadn’t even occurred to them, was whether that was what he wanted.

He fixed his tie, turned away from the mirror, and climbed the ladder up to Jack's office.

"I could slap you for not having called me in earlier," Gwen was saying as he emerged.

"It wasn't really Torchwood business this morning," Jack said with a sigh. "It was Donna. I called you once we had void vultures threatening Cardiff, didn't I?"

"Yes, thanks for that," Gwen said. John couldn't see her face, but he was certain she said it with a certain lift of an eyebrow that always meant trouble. He could remember other things about Gwen, too, if he didn't try too hard: her husband's name was Rhys, she always ordered chicken vindaloo when they got Indian, and she'd come to him once because she’d thought she might be pregnant. She didn’t need him to do the test, of course, but she was scared and didn't want to tell the others if there wasn't anything to tell.

There hadn't been. She'd cried, even as she said it was for the best. He'd hugged her and covered for her with Jack so she could go home early without having to explain herself.

All of this swept over John in about a second and a half. He blinked, and the scene in Jack's office slid into focus. Jack sat behind his desk; Gwen and Ianto were seated in front of it, Gwen with a pad of paper in hand and Ianto with his PDA. The chair between them was empty. The conversation stalled as John slid into it with a brief, embarrassed smile. "Sorry," he said.

"Don't be," Jack muttered.

Gwen narrowed her eyes, but smiled when she turned to John. "Don't worry," she told him. "We were just discussing Jack's questionable management tactics." She hesitated. “Do you know who I am?”

John nodded. "I remember. As well as I remember anything right now." He cleared his throat; he could tell Gwen was about to try and reassure him that everything would be fine, and he didn't particularly want to hear it. "Where's everyone else?"

"Downstairs, discussing how to stop the void vultures from coming through. What I want to talk about," Jack said, turning toward his computer, "is what we're going to do once they succeed. From what the Doctor's told me, we'll still be left with however many vultures we have at the time." He pulled up the CCTV feed. "We have about four dozen on the Plass right now, clustered around the tourist office. They don't appear to be taking much notice of pedestrians - and the pedestrians aren't taking much notice of them, thanks to their perception filters - but I want to ask the Cardiff police to cordon off the Plass."

Gwen stirred in her seat. "I suppose you want me to liaise with the police."

Jack nodded. "Tell them that if they see one of these things outside of the Plass, they should shoot on sight. Inside the Plass, there’s just too many for us to engage them at all yet.” Gwen made a note on her pad. “Unfortunately, I don’t think we can count on them staying contained forever. Once they lose Rose as a focus, they’re likely to get bored and hungry and go looking for entertainment.” A couple keystrokes brought a map of Cardiff up on the screen. "I think the areas at greatest risk are those that've seen major Rift activity lately."

"So, Splott," Ianto said, leaning forward to point, "where all those weevils came through last week."

"Leckwith, too," Gwen said, pulling a face, "with the flesh-eating slugs. Not to mention all the garbage that got dumped in Canton last week. We're going to be stretched thin."

"Well, the good news is that it doesn't take any sort of specialized equipment to kill these things," Jack said, leaning back in his chair. "I brought one down with my Webley, and it just fizzled away after ten minutes or so. No clean up."

Gwen raised her eyebrows. "Lovely. And I mean that for once. I’ll get on the phone with Andy, see what I can do about cordoning off the Plass.”

"I’ll see if we have any information in the mainframe that might help," Ianto volunteered, "and I'll keep an ear on the police scanner for anything suspicious. If they start to spread out over the city, it'll probably show up there first."

“Great,” Jack said. “I’ll be back as soon as possible. Until then, Gwen, you’re in charge.”

The others started to rise. John straightened up in his chair. "What about me? What should I do?”

Jack and Ianto exchanged a glance. "Nothing," Jack said.

"But there must be something."

Ianto put his hand on John's arm. "Just keep trying to remember, all right? That's all you need to do."

John nodded, looking away. He stayed in his seat while Gwen stood and went to call her contacts at the police and Jack headed downstairs to check in with the others. Ianto rose as well, tidied Jack's desk with brief, habitual movements, and then, with a squeeze to John's shoulder, turned to follow Jack. John stared at Jack's desk, littered with things that might have meant something to him once: memos, artifacts, an odd little coral paperweight in the corner. He reached out to touch the coral. It was warm beneath his fingers - and it _hummed_.

John hastily pulled his hand back and stood to pace restlessly around the office. He paused in front of the window and watched Jack and Ianto, speaking quietly at the foot of the stairs. They both looked serious, and Ianto had that little line between his brows that meant he was upset but didn’t want to let on. John frowned, hoping he hadn’t been the one to put it there.

Could he keep them, he wondered, if he decided not to remember? Could they love him just as he was, just John Noble? They would try, John was certain, if that was what he decided on. But he wasn’t sure either of them would ever be able to look at him and not think of the Doctor. They might always miss the other him, and eventually that would break his heart. Break all of their hearts.

John sighed and turned away from the window. He had some time yet.


	6. Chapter 6

Ianto was unsurprised to find Jack lying in wait for him at the bottom of the stairs. He looked grim but determined, and Ianto gave a mental wince in anticipation. "What?" Ianto asked.

Jack crossed his arms over his chest. "You know what." Ianto quirked an eyebrow and Jack huffed out an annoyed breath. "What was that scene with John about earlier?"

Ianto sighed. He'd realized immediately that shutting John up like that would only draw Jack’s attention. But he'd panicked; the last thing he wanted was to have that discussion under those circumstances. He'd meant what he'd said to John. He could live with only hearing _I love you_ once in a very great while. Jack's water heater, on the other hand, he could not live with for much longer. Ianto had learned to pick his battles, and he'd picked that one over this one.

Jack was still waiting for an answer. "Nothing," Ianto tried. "He wanted to talk about the house, and it wasn't the time."

"That was an awfully vigorous objection for _it wasn't the time_ ," Jack said, with a skeptical lift of an eyebrow.

"I didn't want to start a discussion we couldn't finish," Ianto said, letting some of his very real impatience leak into his voice. "Especially when the Doctor isn't himself. I don't want John to agree to something the Doctor wouldn’t want."

"Hmm," Jack said, but he relaxed enough that Ianto knew he'd bought it. "You're pretty stuck on this house thing.”

"I am," Ianto said, lifting his chin.

"Why?"

"I told you," Ianto said. "Your water heater is ridiculously small and I like natural light."

"Your flat -"

"- is too small for the three of us. We found that out when I was ill."

Jack grimaced. “That we did.” But he was still looking at Ianto, almost studying him. Ianto let him. Jack seemed less panicked now than he had earlier, at least. Perhaps he just needed time to get used to the idea. "Houses are a lot of work," Jack said, after a long silence. "We hardly have any time off as it is. Do you really want to spend it digging flowerbeds and cleaning rain gutters?"

Ianto crossed his arms over his chest. "What if I do?"

"What if I don't?" Jack countered, frowning. "Couldn't we just get a bigger flat?"

Ianto nodded. "We could. I'd settle for that."

"But you’d be settling." Ianto nodded again. Jack sighed. "Ianto, why? Houses are long-term investments."

Something very much like ice lodged itself in the pit of Ianto's stomach. "I'm not sure how to take that," he said in a deliberately even voice. "I hope that you're not implying that we're not worth a long-term investment."

Jack shook his head. "No, of course not. That's not what I meant. I just -" He stopped, looked away, swallowed hard. Ianto frowned. This wasn't Jack's usual commitment-phobia, he thought, though it was of a similar flavor. All this talk of houses and mortgages was really getting to him, and not in the way Ianto had expected.

When Jack finally spoke, his voice was very quiet. "I hope you and the Doctor both know that I'm in this for the long haul, even if I've never said so. But the two of you can commit to each other, and to me, for the rest of your lives. I can't."

"Oh," Ianto said, as the light finally dawned. A horrible, harsh light, like the bare bulb in Jack's bathroom in the middle of the night. A flat would be easier to deal with when one day - perhaps very suddenly - Jack was the only one left. "Oh," he said again, subdued.

It was hard not to see the logic. Torchwood being what it was, Ianto supposed a thirty-year mortgage was a bit absurd. It would leave Jack saddled with a place he hadn't wanted to begin with, filled with memories of the three of them that would be painful to the touch for a long time. "Well," Ianto said, in as light a voice as he could manage, "that's that, then. I'll call the estate agent and let her know I changed my mind."

"Ianto," Jack said in a pained voice, "if this is something you really want -"

"It is," Ianto said. Jack winced. "My parents never owned their own house, and it was something I always wanted for myself. My life is nothing like I ever thought it would be, but I thought . . . I thought this was something I might still be able to have. But if all you're going to do is think about the day you'll have to clean it out . . ." Ianto shook his head. "I can't do that to you, Jack. It isn't worth it."

Jack let out a long breath. "I'm sorry."

Ianto gave him a sad smile. "Me, too. But you're right, flats are easier. I probably like gardening better in theory than in practice, anyway." He slid his hand across the back of Jack's neck and pulled him in for a kiss. Jack was stiff and unhappy at first, but Ianto was persistent. Slowly, he relaxed. They leaned together, forehead to forehead, until Ianto finally pulled away. "I'm supposed to be on the police scanner.”

“Right,” Jack said, letting out a breath, “and I’m supposed to be -”

“Jack!” the Doctor said, bounding over from the other end of the Hub. “There you are! Time to be off! Ianto here will hold down the fort - well, it’s more of a dungeon, really, come to think of it, but ‘hold down the dungeon’ just doesn’t have the same ring to it, does it?”

Ianto blinked rapidly, but the Doctor was already gone, collecting Donna and Rose from the sofa. “I guess that’s your cue,” he said to Jack. “Here.” He took Jack’s coat from the rack by the lift and held it out for Jack to shrug into. He smoothed it out over Jack’s broad shoulders and stepped back.

Jack turned to face him. His face looked very strange. If Ianto didn’t know better, he’d have thought Jack was on the verge of tears. “Ianto, I -” He stopped. “I’m lucky to have you.”

Ianto smiled. “Thank you, sir. Good luck.”

“You, too. I’ll see you soon.” Ianto watched him go, his step quickening as he approached the TARDIS. The door shut behind him; almost immediately Ianto heard the wheezing, mechanical sound it made as it disappeared fill the Hub. Any papers not weighted down fluttered and floated and fell in the rush of displaced air. Ianto heaved a sigh and went around, picking them up and setting them back where they belonged for the third time that day.

With everything finally back in its proper place, Ianto seated himself at his work station. He brought up the Rift monitoring program and the police scanner simultaneously. It was eerily quiet in the Hub, even as the CCTV showed a multitude of restless void vultures gathering on the Plass, staring at the door to the tourist office with single-minded determination. Like fans at the stage door after a rock concert, Ianto thought, and would have laughed if the situation hadn't been so dire.

The Rift monitor was quiet and the police scanner chatter was normal. Ianto started a search running on the mainframe, but the truth was that there wasn't much he could do until it returned some results - in five minutes or five hours, it was impossible to say.

He prepared himself for a long, boring wait by starting a game of Scrabble against the mainframe. No one but the Doctor - their Doctor - had ever won against it, but Ianto had come close a few times and he felt it was within his grasp if he kept trying. Or it was possible the mainframe was letting him get close, so he wouldn't stop playing out of frustration. From what the Doctor said about her AI, that might not be beyond her abilities. But Ianto figured her attention would be divided just now, between the search and the game. Not that Scrabble required any significant memory or power, but Ianto figured he needed every advantage he could get.

Ianto was just shuffling his tiles, trying to figure out what he could do with six vowels and a Z, when someone touched his shoulder. He swiveled around to see Gwen looking ready for action, with her hair pulled back and a Glock at her hip. "Going out the back way?" Ianto asked, referring to the service tunnels that snaked below the Millennium Center and met up with several unofficial routes out of the Hub.

She grimaced. "Andy wants me up top to help coordinate with the locals."

"The tunnels aren't so bad," Ianto assured her. "I used them last winter, when we had that downpour that flooded the tourist office and shorted out the lift."

"Right," she said with a sigh. "Well, keep me in the loop." She hesitated. "Not that this is any of my business -"

A phrase that never boded well, Ianto reflected.

"- but have you talked to Jack and the Doctor yet? About what we talked about last week?" Gwen had glimpsed the pile of pamphlets and brochures on Ianto's desk after his visit to the estate agent, before he'd had time to hide them.

Ianto nodded. "Yes. And no," he added, before Gwen could ask what their answer had been. Her face fell. "It's all right, really."

"It's Jack, isn't it?" she asked quietly.

"Yes, but not for the reasons you're thinking. Gwen, listen to me." Ianto caught and held her gaze. "He has his reasons and they're good ones. He's not being emotionally distant or withholding or anything like that. Don't say anything to him, all right?"

She nodded. "All right." Swiftly she bent and kissed Ianto on the cheek. Then she headed off toward the autopsy bay, where a door in the back of a supply closet guarded the most direct entrance to the service tunnels. Ianto sighed and turned back to his computer.

He hadn't been at the waiting game for very long - though he had managed ZIT for a satisfying twenty-six points - when someone touched his shoulder again. There was only one other person left in the Hub. He swiveled around to look at John. "Hey," he said. "Everything all right?"

John nodded. "I just - are you sure there's nothing I can do?" he asked, sounding a little desperate. "I can't just sit around trying to remember. Even if it's just filing or paperwork or - or anything. I know you can't trust me with something important, but -

"Hey, it's all right," Ianto said, standing to grip John’s shoulder so he'd slow down. "I know this is frustrating." He thought quickly. "Look, if you listened to the police scanner, do you think you could pick out anything unusual?"

"Anything alien, you mean?" John said. Ianto nodded. "I can do that." He pulled a chair over and settled in beside Ianto, who handed him a headset.

"Yeoman," John said suddenly.

Ianto glanced over in surprised. "What?"

John pointed to the Scrabble board on the screen. "Yeoman, double word score."

"Thanks," Ianto said, and played it.

There they sat for nearly an hour, not speaking except for Scrabble suggestions, both pretending, Ianto thought, that they weren't twiddling their thumbs and hoping for the best. Eventually Ianto stopped playing and let John take over completely, which he did with nearly as much enthusiasm and skill as the Doctor. Vaguely comforted by this, Ianto found himself drifting and realized it was much later than he'd thought - nearly nine. He forced himself to straighten up in his chair. He needed to check in with Gwen, and he and John should both eat something. There was leftover pizza in the refrigerator.

He'd put his hand to his ear to call Gwen when the Rift alarm began shrieking; there was a burst of static in his ear as the comms went down and all the CCTV footage of the Plass blacked out. John yelped; Ianto dove for the keyboard. He swore. "Massive spike," he reported, "right on top of us."

John frowned. "Do you think it has anything to do with the - the vultures?"

"I don't believe in coincidences," Ianto said grimly.

It took him nearly ten minutes to get the comms up and running again. "Ianto, thank God," Gwen said when he finally reached her.

"What's happening up there?" he asked, trying to get the CCTV coverage back up, to no avail. "Tosh's program detected a huge spike."

"Yes, I -" Her voice faltered a little. "God, Ianto, I saw it. It was like there was a split in the sky, and this wind came out of it and all the hair on the back of my neck stood up. And the vultures. All afternoon, they've been just sitting there, staring at the tourist office, but now - I think it stirred them up."

"Fantastic," Ianto muttered. And who knew when Jack would be back. "Do you think -"

"Oh shit," Gwen said, and there was the unmistakable sound of gunshots being fired very close to the comm pick-up. Ianto flinched. There were two more gunshots, some muffled swearing, and finally the sizzle of an energy weapon being discharged.

"Gwen?" Ianto demanded. "Gwen, are you there?"

"I'm here," she said. "Ianto, I thought Jack brought one of those things down with his Webley!"

"He did," Ianto said, with a sudden sense of dread. "I saw him."

"Well, the one that just dive bombed us wasn't slowed down by my Glock! If I hadn't had Jack's blaster with me - God, these things are ugly, aren't they?"

"I don't get it, a single shot brought one down earlier," Ianto said. "Unless . . . damn. The Doctor said they can feed off the Rift energy."

"And that spike was them carbo-loading. Oh bloody hell. A bunch of them just took off."

"Towards you?" Ianto asked in alarm.

"No, away. Ianto . . . there's so many of them. Dozens and dozens of them. Seeing them in the sky like this . . ." Gwen's voice dropped suddenly. "Ianto, I don't know what we're going to do."

Ianto swallowed. He wished he had anything at all encouraging to say, but he couldn't bring himself to lie. "Me neither."

***

Jack was barely inside the TARDIS when the Doctor started dancing around the console, throwing levers and switches to take them into the vortex. Donna stepped forward to try and help, but the Doctor shoved himself between her and the console until she was forced to step back. He kept poking at the console even once the time rotor settled, muttering to himself under his breath and raking his hands through his hair till it stood on end.

Donna put her hands on her hips. “Doctor,” she said loudly.

“Quiet, Donna, I’m thinking,” he replied, without looking up.

Donna rolled her eyes. “Alien prawn,” she muttered. His shoulders twitched beneath his suit coat, but he gave no other indication he’d heard. She blew out a breath and turned to the Jack and Rose. “All right, looks like we have a few minutes,” she said, glancing at Rose. “Why don’t you go change into something comfortable while we wait?” She supposed it didn’t matter, really, what Rose wore, but she wanted a few minutes alone with the Doctor so he didn’t handle this in a way he’d completely regret later.

Rose glanced at the Doctor before nodding. Jack took her hand. “I’ll come with you. Good luck,” he added in a mutter to Donna. She grimaced in agreement. They left, Rose casting one last look over her shoulder at the Doctor.

The prawn in question was currently applying a mallet to the TARDIS console. Donna watched him silently for thirty-seven seconds before clearing her throat. “You’re being a right arsehole, you know that?” The Doctor grunted. “Actually, you probably do know that,” she went on. “What I can’t figure out is why. You have to know you’re killing Rose by acting like you don’t care she’s about to do something bloody dangerous.”

“Donna, really, would you just shut up? I’m trying to work,” the Doctor snapped, lifting his head at last.

She snorted. “Sure you are. Don’t forget who you’re talking to, spaceman. If something happens to Rose, you’re going to regret like hell that you ignored her and made her feel like shit.”

The Doctor slammed both hands down on the console. “ _Nothing_ is going to happen to Rose!”

“You don’t -”

“I do know that!” he shouted. “I am going to make this work - I’m going to save her and you and bloody Cardiff, too! But I can only do that if you _shut up and let me work_!” He gave the console another resounding _thwak_ with the mallet. Sparks flew, and the time rotor shuddered.

“Doctor,” Donna said softly, “you’re hurting her.” She didn’t mean Rose.

“She’s fine,” the Doctor said shortly, but he did at least let the mallet fall to the floor. He took a deep breath and rubbed both hands through his hair. He muttered briefly to himself, too low for Donna to make out.

“Doctor,” Donna said, as gently as possible, “it’s okay for you to be upset about this. I’m upset about it, too. And it’s okay for you to show Rose that you’re upset. We’re your friends. We’re the people you trust.”

His head came up. “Trust? Yes, of course I trust you, Donna. Right now I trust you to stay here and not touch anything while I go get a flash converter from storage vault G.”

Donna glared. “Doctor -”

“Back in a mo!”

She gritted her teeth as he vanished down a corridor. Then she crossed her arms and shook her head, staring up at the time rotor. “How have you put up with him for so long?” she asked the TARDIS. Her reply was like a weary, worried smile in the back of Donna’s mind. Donna smiled back, but then she lowered her chin and frowned at the console. A flash converter, she thought. What could he possibly need one of those for? She circled the console slowly; cables snaked in and out, and one of them stretched across the floor and down into the nest of circuitry below.

“Hmm,” she murmured, an unpleasant suspicion blooming in the back of her mind. She followed the cable below the grating and crouched to examine the Doctor’s work. Then she went back up and crawled beneath the console to confirm her suspicions. “Fuck,” she said at last, with feeling. An image, unbidden, appeared in her mind of the Doctor hurrying up a corridor toward the console room. She made her decision between one breath and the next. It wasn’t as though she had many options, after all; there was only one responsible course of action.

When the Doctor returned less than a minute later, Donna was standing by the console, arms crossed over her chest and disconnected cables at her feet. The Doctor froze. “Donna,” he breathed, “what have you done?”

“Funny,” she said, “but that was going to be my question. Here’s a variation: What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

His face twisted. “Saving Rose’s life.”

She shook her head. “You really are the biggest, most dangerous mess there ever was. Closing the tears between universes is impossible without another Time Lord. You could’ve blown up the universe! Both of them! _All_ of them!”

He gritted his teeth. “I won’t. I won’t,” he insisted, when she opened her mouth to object. “You and Jack together - you’re basically another Time Lord. If the two of you just cooperate -”

“No,” she said flatly. “No, I won’t help you do this. And neither will Jack.”

The Doctor lifted his chin. “Jack will do what I say.”

Donna snorted. “Not on this, he won’t. You’re not in your right mind right now. You need someone to stop you.”

He shoved her aside to kneel down and examine the cables she’d pulled out. “You’re wrong. I’m in more of my right mind than I’ve been in months.” He threw the cables down in disgust and got to his feet. He glared down at her. “I am the Last of the Time Lords,” he said, very slowly, “and the universe owes me this. Rose Tyler is not going to die today.”

Donna shook her head. “Doctor, this is wrong. I can’t let you do it.”

He smiled - only it wasn’t a smile she’d ever seen on him before. She resisted the urge to step back. “And just how are you going to stop me?”

“She’s not,” Jack said. There was an impossibly loud _click_ as he flicked the safety off of his Webley, which was trained on the Doctor. “I am. You can’t do this, Doctor.”

“I can, actually,” the Doctor said. He looked amused, smirking at the gun in Jack’s hand. “More easily than you could shoot me. Tell me, are you thinking of aiming to kill or just to wound?”

“Not sure yet. But the more you keep talking, the more I think I might be willing to take my chances with the next you.”

“Do it, then,” the Doctor hissed.

Rose’s voice rang out. “Stop. All of you, just stop.”

Everyone froze, looking at her. She looked impossibly small and young, Donna thought, dressed in flannel pajamas with no make-up on, but she also looked as though her spine had been replaced with a steel rod. She reached out and gently shoved Jack’s Webley aside, so that it was no longer aimed at the Doctor. Then she walked straight up to the Doctor, put her hands on her hips, and said, “How dare you?”

His fury evaporated instantly. “I - _what_?”

“I made my choices - all of them. This is my risk - my sacrifice, if that’s what it comes down to. You don’t have the right to take that away from me.”

The Doctor shook his head, looking suddenly anguished. “You don’t understand.”

“I do, actually.” She smiled bitterly. “I’ve changed a lot, Doctor. So’ve you, it seems. But you have to let me do this.”

He shook his head. “No. I won’t, Rose, I can’t - don’t make me -”

“You can,” she said. “You have to.”

“No, no, I can do this, you’ll see!” He darted down the stairs. Donna could hear him below, reconnecting the cables and wiring she’d ripped out; his screwdriver whirred away, repairing the broken connections. Rose covered her mouth with her hand, and Jack bent over, as though the wind had been knocked out of him. Donna leaned down and picked up the mallet, tapping it idly against her knee.

“Impossible!” the Doctor said, bounding up the stairs, “I use that word too much - I said it was impossible for you to get back to me and you did it -”

“You also said it was irresponsible, Doctor,” Rose reminded him. “So’s this, only it’s worse! At least I didn’t know I was putting everyone else in danger!”

“No one’s in danger!” he insisted, crouching down by the console. “I have everything under -”

He crumpled sideways, the cable falling out of his hand. Donna lowered the mallet and looked at the others. “Sorry,” she said into the sudden silence, “but time’s becoming critical. Jack, get some cable or rope and find a way to restrain him once he wakes up - it doesn’t have to hold him forever, but we need to buy ourselves some time. Rose . . .” Donna took a deep breath. “We’re going to go ahead with the original plan. Do you trust me?”

She nodded, eyes riveted on Jack and the Doctor. Donna watched as Jack checked the Doctor’s pulse, then tied his limp hands behind his back with a thick rope. She crouched down and retrieved his screwdriver from the pocket of his jacket and slipped it into her own. Then she straightened up, drew a deep breath, and turned towards the console. This wasn’t going to be easy.

Fortunately, the TARDIS was on board with their plan. Within a few minutes, the Zero Room had materialized beside the console room, with the medbay just down the hall. The Zero Room was the safest place to do this; it was by no means a guarantee, but Donna’s analysis indicated that it significantly increased Rose’s chances of survival - and there was less risk to everyone else, as well, if they kept the heart of the TARDIS as contained as possible.

“I wish you’d let me stay with you,” Jack said to Rose, once everything was ready. “You shouldn’t be alone.”

“I won’t be,” Rose said with a smile, reaching out to trace the Gallifreyan symbol on the door to the Zero Room. Donna would have known what it meant, once, but she had locked away her ability to read Gallifreyan. It hadn't felt appropriate. “Anyway,” she added, looking back at him, “just because you don’t stay dead doesn’t mean you can’t get sucked into the void or - or pulled apart into atoms.” Her voice faltered at the end, just a little, but her chin was up and her eyes were dry.

Jack pulled her into a hug and kissed her temple. “You’re amazing, Rose. I hope you know that.”

“Thanks.” Rose kissed him on the cheek, stepped back, and turned to Donna. “And thank you, Donna, for everything.”

“Oi, no good-bye’s, you hear me?” Donna replied, even as she pulled Rose tight against her. “You’re gonna be fine.”

“But if I’m not,” Rose said, her voice admirably steady, “promise me you’ll look after my alien prawn, all right?”

Donna nodded, exchanging a look with Jack. The Doctor technically hadn’t asked her to travel with him again - and Donna wasn’t sure she’d be high on his list of desired companions after the incident with the mallet - but if Rose died or worse, then leaving him on his own would be criminally negligent. God only knew what he might do to get her back. Jack would fit the bill well enough, but he was too much of a soldier to push back the way the Doctor would need. Not to mention, Jack had a life on Earth he seemed quite fond of. It would have to be her.

“Right, then,” Rose said, giving them a bright smile. “Here we go.” She hesitated with her hand on the door. “Tell him . . .” She swallowed. “Tell him I don’t regret any of it. Not a single moment.”

She stepped into the Zero Room. The door slid shut behind her and vanished, leaving smooth wall in its place, save for a small window. Donna peered through it as Rose walked to the center of the strange, white room and lowered herself to the floor. She sat cross-legged, almost as though she were meditating.

Jack leaned his back against the wall beside the door and closed his eyes. "I can't watch this."

Donna reached for his hand. "That's all right. I will." Someone had to bear witness, for Rose and for the Doctor.

For a long time, nothing seemed to happen at all. Then the room began to fill with an unearthly golden glow; it made something buried deep inside Donna quicken. She sucked in a breath and her hand tightened on Jack's.

"What?" he asked. "Donna, what's happening?"

"You should see this," she whispered. "It's beautiful."

Donna felt him turn to look. "Oh," he said faintly.

"It's -"

"- the heart of the TARDIS." She heard him swallow hard. "I - I don't remember being dead, the first time. Not really. But sometimes I have this dream - Rose, bathed in light, and a voice that says, _I bring life_. That's the light. I know it is."

The light grew brighter and brighter, until they both had to look away. It was only then that Donna realized Jack had tears streaming down his face. She knelt down, pulling him along to sit on the floor beside her, and let him weep on her shoulder.

They had both been quiet for a long time when the glow started to fade. Donna pulled herself to her feet. She peered through the window, but she still couldn’t see anything other than golden light. She turned to say as much to Jack and stopped. The Doctor stood in the threshold, bathed in the much gentler light of the console. The ropes Jack had bound him with hung loosely from his hands.

“Is it done?” he asked quietly.

“Almost,” Donna said. She bit her lip. “Sorry about the, um, the mallet.”

He rubbed the back of his head. “It’s all right. You were right. I was . . .” He closed his eyes. “I was not in my right mind. Growing senile in my old age, I guess.” His hands clenched together and he took a step closer. “Was she angry with me?”

“No,” Jack said. He pulled himself to his feet and looked the Doctor in the eye. “You know Rose. She’s so brave.”

“Braver than me,” the Doctor said, lips twisting. “I couldn’t do it.”

Jack’s hand landed on the Doctor’s shoulder. “I know, Doc. It’s okay.”

He shook his head. “It’s not. Donna said it. I’m the biggest, most dangerous mess there ever was.” Donna stepped aside to let him peer through the window. He sucked in a breath. “She’s still here. She wasn’t sucked into the void and she wasn’t pulled apart.” Donna let out her own breath of relief and squeezed Jack’s hand. The Doctor’s hand came up and pressed against the wall. “Come on, let me in.” Nothing happened; he hissed and swore, slapping the wall beside the window. “Come on, let me in. Don’t do this - she needs me. _Let me in!_ ”

The door suddenly reappeared. The Doctor nearly fell through; Jack grabbed Donna by the arm and hauled her back, out the range of the golden glow still emanating from the Zero Room. Donna barely breathed, praying in the most fundamental way that Rose would be all right.

The Doctor reappeared, ringed in gold. Rose was cradled in his arms, her long hair falling towards the floor. “Oh God,” Jack said, tightening his grip on Donna.

“She isn’t breathing,” the Doctor whispered. “Her heart’s not beating. I can’t . . .” He stumbled suddenly, going down to one knee. “I don’t - I don’t -”

Donna pulled away from Jack and went to her knees beside the Doctor. She felt for a pulse in Rose’s neck - there was none - and checked her pupils. Her eyes were rolled back in her head. That didn’t bode well at all, but Donna wasn’t ready to give up yet, even if it seemed the Doctor had. She shoved herself to her feet. "Stay where you are and don't do anything stupid," she ordered him. "I'll be right back."

The scanner Donna needed was sitting out on the counter in the medbay as though someone had left it there for her. Donna snatched it up and ran back out. She pushed Jack aside and quickly scanned Rose’s body.

"Donna, don't," the Doctor said heavily. "It's been too long."

"Shut it," she told him. "Look at these readings. She's not dead, but she's in a coma so deep it's almost the same thing."

Jack's eyes widened and he made a grab for the scanner. The Doctor got there first and scrolled rapidly through the results. His mouth dropped open. “Of _course_! Thick, I’m so _thick_! Void radiation, rift radiation, artron energy, and she's just been exposed to a _massive_ dose of huon particles. We're in a TARDIS, sitting in the time vortex. It's too much. We have to get her out, right now!” He tried to jump up, but was too encumbered by Rose. He pushed her unceremoniously at Jack and sprang to his feet, grabbing Donna’s hand to haul her into the console room behind him.

Donna had never seen the Doctor materialize the TARDIS so fast. Jack had barely appeared with Rose still cradled in his arms when they landed. The Doctor flung the doors open and shoved Jack through. Donna followed, relieved to find a Hub not much changed from when they'd left. There was a ring of coffee still damp on the desk where Donna had set her mug.

Ianto appeared in the same suit he'd been wearing earlier. He looked harried and his tie was askew. "Thank God," he said. "Jack, we've got a situation -"

"Not now," Jack said, brushing past him and down the steps into the autopsy bay.

The Doctor swept the table clear with a crash and a clatter. "Epinephrine!" he demanded, rifling through the drawers as Jack laid Rose on the table.

“Here, Doctor!” Jack said, tossing him a sealed syringe. The Doctor ripped it open. Donna stood frozen beside Ianto as the Doctor turned and injected it straight into Rose's heart.

There was an infinite moment of terrible stillness. Then her eyes flew open and she took a horrible, gasping breath. Jack was there at once, cradling her in his arms. "There you are, sweetheart. I know, that first breath's a bitch, but you're fine, everything's fine."

"Jack?" she whispered.

"I'm here," he said, "and so is the Doctor. So's Donna."

"Oh," she said, "oh, good. I -" Her voice broke and she began to weep, clutching desperately at Jack's shirt. He held her close, even as he looked up to catch the Doctor's eye.

But the Doctor had backed away. He watched Rose sob in Jack's arms, and then, to Donna’s amazement, he turned to brush past her and Ianto. Donna spun on her heel, striding after him. She caught up with him and grabbed his shoulder, forcing him to face her. "Doctor!" she said, too shocked to think of anything else.

"Think, Donna," he snapped.

She shook her head. "I don't -"

"No, of course you don't," the Doctor said. "You think you know everything now, but consider for one moment, just one, that there might still be things I know that you don't. You gave up a lot, Donna. You had to, or your brain would've dribbled out your ears - _again_."

Donna took a step back. "Excuse me?"

"No, I don't excuse you. Think about it. Huon particles, void radiation, artron energy -"

"Doctor, Rose is alive," Donna said, raising her voice above the diatribe. "What else matters?"

He stared at her, eyes huge and furious and terribly sad. "Yes. She's alive. And if she ever travels in the TARDIS again, it will kill her."

Donna stared. “What?” she breathed.

“You heard me,” he said, pushing past her.

“Where are you going?” Donna demanded, hot on his heels.

“I’m leaving. I don’t care if you think it makes me a coward. I can’t be here.”

“Doctor, you can’t just leave her! She doesn’t even know! Doctor!” Donna wedged herself in between the Doctor and the door of the TARDIS. “You can’t do this.”

“What’s going on?” Jack asked, appearing suddenly behind the Doctor. “Doc, Rose is asking for you.”

The Doctor closed his eyes. This close, it wasn’t hard to read the anguish on his face. “Tell her . . . tell her I’m sorry. Donna, please. Let me in.”

Donna met his eyes. “Don’t you dare go anywhere without me, you understand?” The Doctor nodded mutely. Donna stepped aside and allowed him into the TARDIS, but kept her foot wedged in the door. She wasn’t even close to trusting him right now.

Jack stared after the Doctor. “Donna, what the hell is going on?”

“It’s Rose,” Donna said plainly. “She can’t travel in the TARDIS anymore. She’s just been exposed to too much - artron radiation, huon particles, void stuff. If she tries to travel in time, it’ll kill her.” Jack swore, colorfully. Donna sighed. “Look, I’m sorry, but I have to -”

“Go,” Jack said, gesturing toward the TARDIS. “I’ll take care of Rose.” Donna gave him a weak smile as thanks and slipped inside, shutting the doors behind her.

The Doctor flipped the lever to take them into the vortex almost before the doors had latched. The ship shuddered beneath Donna’s feet, but she managed to make her way up the ramp. She went and stood beside him, placing her hand over his. “Doctor,” she said quietly.

He drew a shaky breath. “Don’t, please,” he said, pulling away from her. He rubbed the back of his neck. “Sorry. I just - I’m tired. The TARDIS’ll help you find your old room.” He turned and walked away.

Donna let him go; there’d be time enough to try and get him to talk to her, she supposed. Instead, she turned to the console and gripped the edge, looking up at the time rotor. “Well, love. What are we going to do now?”

“I don’t know,” said a startlingly familiar voice from behind her, “but is there any chance I could go home?”

Donna turned. John Noble, clad now in jeans and a too-large sweatshirt, smiled weakly at her. “Hullo,” he said, with a small wave.

Donna stared. “Fan-bloody-tastic. Jack and Ianto are going to _kill me_.”


	7. Chapter 7

“Jack? I thought I heard -”

Jack turned. He didn’t know how long he’d been staring at the spot where the TARDIS had stood, but it was long enough for Rose to talk Ianto into letting her up, even if she was leaning heavily on him. “I thought I heard the TARDIS leave,” she said, her voice as shaky as the rest of her looked.

“Yeah,” Jack said with a sigh. “I’m sorry. Look, we’ve got some things to talk about. Ianto, why don’t you go find the Do - John and Gwen?”

Ianto nodded and passed Rose to Jack. “Yes, sir. Gwen’s up on the Plass with the police, but I’ll see where John’s got to.” He glanced back at Rose. “Perhaps I should also make some coffee. Or tea.”

“Yeah, that’d be great. Thanks.” Ianto vanished. Jack took Rose’s arm, though she seemed to be getting steadier by the moment, and led her over to sit at Ianto’s work station. “How’re you feeling? You gave us all a scare.”

“Still a bit out of it,” she admitted, clenching her hands around his. “I can’t seem to stop shaking.”

“Ianto’s tea will help. Best in Cardiff.”

Rose smiled weakly. “Jack, what happened? I mean, I knew the Doctor was mad at me, but I didn’t think -” Her voice cracked. “I didn’t think he’d just leave.”

“I know,” Jack said quietly. “The Doctor - you know how he is. He’s lost a lot of people, and he’s lost even more since he said good-bye to you. I think - and this is only my best guess - I think he’s been terrified of losing you all over again ever since you came back.”

Rose’s head came up. “Did he say that to you?”

Jack gave a short laugh. “Not in so many words. Let’s just say that he and I have more in common than either of us would like.”

Rose suddenly looked close to tears. “Oh Jack. I’m sorry.”

He squeezed her hands. “Hey, don’t worry about it. I didn’t say that to make you feel bad, I’m just trying to give you some context.”

She nodded and took several deep breaths. When she spoke again her voice was steady, if rather rough. “But why did he run? If he was afraid of losing me - I’m not lost. I’m right here. A little worse for wear, maybe, but definitely here.”

Jack reached out and rested a hand on her shoulder. “And I am so glad, Rose. You’ve no idea how glad I am. You have a home here for as long as you want or need it, all right?”

She bit her lip. “There’s a _but_ coming, isn’t there?”

He nodded. “You can’t travel in the TARDIS anymore. The amount of void radiation you’ve been exposed to, along with the massive doses of artron radiation and huon particles you were hit with today - it’d just be too much. Being in the TARDIS, in the time vortex, almost killed you. We had to restart your heart.”

“Oh,” Rose said faintly.

“So you’re here. You’re not lost. But -”

“- to the Doctor, I might as well be,” she finished. Jack nodded. He squeezed her shoulder in support. “Well, that wasn’t something I ever thought of.” She swallowed hard. “Could you - give me a minute?”

“Yeah.” He hesitated. “Are you going to be okay?”

She smiled faintly. “Yeah. Thanks, Jack.”

“Anytime. I’ll be around.” He rose and went to find Ianto.

He found him in the kitchen making coffee and boiling water for tea, just as Jack had hoped, but there was no John in evidence. “Is Rose all right?” Ianto asked, handing Jack his cup.

“She will be.”

“Good.” Ianto wiped up some spilled milk with a damp rag and then turned, crossed his arms over his chest, and regarded Jack seriously. “We have a situation. Two, actually.” Jack nodded for him to continue and sipped his coffee. Sweet, blessed caffeine. “About twenty minutes ago,” Ianto said, “there was a huge Rift spike right on top of the Plass. It wiped out all of the CCTV - I only just got it up and running again. Gwen reports that the void vultures got restless after it happened. One of them attacked - the police fired on it, with no result. Gwen managed to bring it down with your blaster.”

Jack frowned. "They're getting stronger."

Ianto nodded. "I think the Rift spike was a huge boost for them. There's still a clump of them right on top of us, but the majority took off after that. There've been sightings across Cardiff, with approximately half a dozen resulting injuries. The police and emergency services are handling it as best they can. Gwen's been coordinating them. I didn't want to leave the Hub until you got back, but they need us up there. No fatalities so far, but -"

"Only a matter of time," Jack finished grimly. “Damn.”

“Bad timing for a Rift spike,” Ianto said, almost apologetically.

Jack shook his head. “I don’t think it was a coincidence. It’s entirely possible the spike was caused by something we did.” Or that the Doctor had done; Jack didn’t think he’d gotten very far in his plans to try and close the holes between universes, but he didn’t know enough about it to say for sure. “Right, then. I need to head up to the Plass. We'll need every energy weapon Torchwood has -"

"Done already," Ianto said. "Cleaned and charged. But, Jack, that’s just the first situation.” He drew a deep breath. “I can’t find John.”

Jack raised his eyebrows. “Where did you look?”

“Everywhere. He was with me when you arrived, but I haven’t seen him since. I’ve checked your office, your room, all the common areas, and I’ve reviewed the CCTV footage for the lower levels. I tried his mobile; it says he’s out of range.” Ianto hesitated. “Jack, do you think it’s possible he might have left in the TARDIS?”

Jack frowned. “That seems . . . unlikely. He didn’t remember anything about the TARDIS before - he didn’t even want to be inside of it.”

“I know, and he didn’t seem to want to know much about the Doctor either, but - I don’t know, Jack.” Ianto bit his lip. “It might’ve just been wishful thinking on my part, but he seemed a lot more like himself. You know how much he missed the TARDIS. What if he left on purpose? What if he doesn’t want to come back? What if we were just the consolation prize and now -”

“He’d never do that,” Jack said quickly. “He just wouldn’t, especially now. But . . . it is possible the Doctor might have taken him by accident.” And in that case, Jack wasn’t sure how they’d bring him home. It’d be a cold day in hell before the Doctor came back voluntarily, and Jack knew exactly how hard it was to find someone who might be anywhere in all of space and time. It made him feel a little better to know Donna was with them, but an angry, bitter, grieving Doctor was unpredictable at best, highly dangerous at worst.

Ianto was silent. “I suppose it’s the safest place for him right now, really,” he said at last. Jack didn’t answer; he wasn’t sure that anywhere within a hundred years or miles of the Doctor was a safe place at the moment. “It’s just . . .” Ianto laughed, briefly and without humor. “You immortal types like to run off. I wish you’d at least leave a note.”

“John isn’t one of us ‘immortal types,’” Jack pointed out. “I don’t know how he ended up on the TARDIS, but he wouldn’t just abandon us.” He was almost as certain as he hoped he sounded. If the Doctor were feeling more himself, he might have been less sure, but he’d seen no signs that John Noble had the slightest interest in the rest of space and time. His curiosity might’ve gotten the better of him, but Jack was sure he was trying to find his way home even now. “I’ll try the number I have for the Doctor. We’ll bring him home, Ianto, I promise.”

Ianto nodded. “I know. And you’re right. He wouldn’t just leave. I know that.” He drew a deep breath and rubbed the back of his neck. “I’d better head up to the Plass. There might not be any new vultures coming through, but there were at least a hundred of the damn things already here last time I checked.”

Jack nodded. “All right. I’ll follow just as soon as I’ve tried the Doctor and made sure Rose is all right.”

“I’m fine,” Rose said from the doorway, “and I’m going, too.”

Jack looked up and frowned. “Are you sure?”

She shrugged. “If it worked, I shouldn’t be more interesting to them than anyone else, and I’ve got several years of field experience.” She held her hands out to show Jack they were steady. “Look. I’m fine, really.”

Jack nodded. “All right. Ianto, find Rose some suitable clothes. I’ll get a weapons cache together for you to transport up top.”

“Not so fast,” Ianto said. “When was the last time either of you ate?” Jack opened his mouth to answer, then frowned. Ianto nodded. “That’s what I thought. It’s been hours since lunch,” he added firmly, when Jack started to object. “Everyone has a sandwich before they go anywhere. I’ll put the coffee and tea in thermoses to take with us. Which do you prefer, Rose?”

Rose smiled. “Tea, thanks. Milk, one sugar.” She winked at Jack. “I see why you keep him around.”

Jack snagged Ianto’s hand as he brushed by on his way to the fridge and kissed the inside of his wrist. “That’s just the tip of the iceberg,” he said. Ianto batted at him in irritation, but his pleased flush did not escape Jack’s notice.

Less than fifteen minutes later, Rose and Ianto had vanished into the utility tunnels with the bag of energy weapons held carefully between them. Jack let Gwen know they were on their way, then took his mobile out. He flipped through his list of contacts till he got to “TARDIS.”

There was no answer. Jack listened to Martha’s voice telling him to leave a message; following her directions would probably be futile, but he supposed it couldn’t hurt. “Doctor, this is Jack,” he said. “I think you might have inadvertently taken off with something of ours we’d very much like back. Call me.” He hung up. Then he tried Donna’s mobile, but it went straight to voicemail. It seemed the Doctor had never fixed her phone up the way he had Martha’s.

Jack hesitated, thinking of the situation on the Plass, and then decided that he owed Wilf an update. “Wilf, it’s Jack,” he said when Wilf answered, breathlessly.

“Jack! Have you heard from the Doctor? We’ve been waiting by the phone all day, but we haven’t heard from anyone.”

“Yes, she’s fine,” Jack said. “No more headaches and she’s got all her memories back. Everything’s fine.”

“Oh thank God,” Wilf said. “Oh Jack, that’s the best news I’ve had in years. Where is she? Why hasn’t she called us?”

Jack winced to himself. “She’s a bit . . . out of range at the moment.”

“You mean she’s with him, don’t you? She’s gone off with the Doctor.”

“Yes. Don’t worry, I’m sure she’ll be in touch,” Jack assured him, “but things are a bit tense right now. She’s where she needs to be, I promise you. I’m sorry I can’t explain more, but I wanted you to know that Donna’s fine.”

“I understand,” Wilf said. “Thank you, Jack. For everything.”

“My pleasure,” Jack said, meaning it. He hung up, slipped the phone into his pocket, grabbed his great coat, and shrugged into it. Rose and Ianto would be halfway to the Plass by now.

In the doorway to the autopsy bay, he paused. Sitting out on the counter was their Doctor’s sonic screwdriver, woefully neglected since John couldn’t remember what it was. Jack pocketed it. Never knew what would come in handy, and he’d long learned to respect the screwdriver.

Between the hours he’d spent in the TARDIS and the ones he’d spent in the subterranean Hub, Jack had completely lost track of time. When last he’d seen daylight, it had been a typical gray Cardiff afternoon; intellectually he knew time had passed, but somehow he still expected watery sunlight or perhaps a light rain. He was unprepared for the pitch blackness that greeted him as he emerged from the utility tunnels into a little back alley behind a shop. There was no moon, and the streetlights had been extinguished. The only light came from across the bay. He held his torch close to his chest and put his hand to his earpiece. "Gwen," he said, in a hushed voice, as he crept toward the Plass, "where are you?"

"I see you," Gwen replied. Her voice was very strained, but Jack supposed that was only to be expected. "Put that light out before -"

Something large and fast flew at Jack's head; he jumped back, pressing against a wall, as the vulture screeched bloody murder. He leaned out to open fire. There was another unearthly scream, followed by the wet, sickening sound of something hitting concrete at high velocity.

"- one of the vultures spots it," Gwen finished.

"Yeah, copy that.” He thumbed off his torch, plunging himself into pitch blackness. “Damn. I should’ve brought those 43rd century night vision goggles we’ve got hanging around.”

“It’s not as dark as it seems at first,” Gwen said. “Give yourself some time to adjust. We’re about about a hundred meters away. Do you need me to come and get you?”

“No,” Jack said at once. He didn’t want to risk Gwen calling attention to herself any more than was necessary. “No, just give me a minute to adjust and I’ll be on my way.” He could already make out the outlines of the buildings and a rustling, restive mass of winged void vultures. Beyond them, he caught the glint of light bouncing off metal - police vehicles, parked at an angle to block the road. There was absolutely no cover. Jack vividly recalled the sensation of talons burying themselves in his ribcage, piercing his lungs and heart. At least it’d been a fast death.

Stalling wouldn’t help anything. “On my way,” he muttered into his earpiece, and set out low to the ground.

Instantly the rustling increased and resolved itself into the flapping of wings. A blaster flared ahead of him and two or three of the vultures fell. Jack brought down another one, looked up, and suddenly found himself pinned to the ground. He reached up and grabbed cold, unresisting skin, like leather stretched over stone. A repulsive stench of death and decay filled his nostrils and he gagged. A talon grazed his cheek and Jack struck out blindly, trying desperately to dislodge the vulture. He really didn't want to die like this twice in one day.

Another blaster flared, much closer, searing bright light across Jack’s retinas. The void vulture screeched, spasming and almost impaling Jack before collapsing across his chest, and the others whirled overhead in a bewildering mass of leathery wings. Jack shuddered and shoved, and finally managed to get the dead vulture off of him. He staggered to his feet and ran for it. Ahead of him, blasters fired, mostly missing but warding the vultures off.

Jack had never been so glad to see a police car in his life. He dove behind it as a vulture made one last dive and then flapped away, shrieking its frustration. He panted from exertion and adrenaline as Gwen scrambled over to crouch beside him. “Well, that was invigorating,” he said with a grin. “Nothing like almost having my face eaten to really get the blood flowing. Anything exciting happen over here?"

"Jack," Gwen said, and stopped.

"What?"

"Jack," Gwen said again, looking at him. In the dark, it was impossible for Jack to read her expression. "We had some trouble over here."

Jack abruptly stopped smiling. “What happened? Where’s Ianto? Where’s Rose?” He rocked back on his heels and craned his neck, as though he could see anything but the police cars hemming him in.

Gwen bit her lip. "Things got hairy while Ianto and Rose were crossing the Plass. One of the vultures caught sight of Rose and went after her. Ianto threw himself in its way.”

"What are you saying?" Jack asked, through a sudden buzzing in his ears. "Gwen. Is he -"

"No," she said. She laid a hand on Jack's arm. "No, he's not. But it's bad. From what I can tell, he's got a concussion and probably a couple of broken ribs. And he's bleeding. I'm afraid to move him very far, and we can't get an ambulance in here. Those things completely dismantled a squad car that attempted to get in about an hour ago.”

Jack was silent as he digested the news. No ambulance meant no hospital, and they couldn’t carry Ianto back across the Plass to the tunnels. They were trapped. "Is he conscious?"

Gwen nodded. "Woozy, but awake. This way." She led him from behind the squad car, past a small knot of cops, to an area tucked up against a storefront, where there was more protection from the wind off the bay. Rose was crouched down beside Ianto, putting pressure on a wound in his abdomen.

Jack dropped to his knees beside Ianto, and took his hand. "Hey there.”

"Hi," Ianto said faintly, voice strained. He coughed, a harsh, wet sound.

"How are we doing?" Gwen asked Rose.

"I think it's slowed a little," she said, "but it's hard to tell in the dark."

"Let me take over for awhile,” Gwen said. Rose nodded and sat back, stripping off her latex gloves. Gwen immediately moved into place at Ianto's side, pressing the cloth over the wound. Jack pulled his torch out and flicked it on. He failed to control an involuntary hiss; that was a lot of blood.

“The vulture must have nicked something,” Rose said. “Maybe his spleen.”

“Hang on,” Jack said, reaching into his pocket. “I’ve got our Doctor’s sonic. It’s not quite as good as the original, but it’s a hell of a lot easier to read.” He put it on the diagnostic setting and scanned Ianto slowly. Then he held it up to the torchlight. “You’re right, Rose. Lacerated the spleen. Also a concussion and two cracked ribs.”

“N-not to m-mention, I think I’m g-going into sh-shock,” Ianto said, through chattering teeth. “Can that th-thing f-fix me, Jack?”

Jack shook his head and squeezed Ianto’s hand. “No. Sorry.” The original sonic screwdriver could have, he thought bitterly, or at least slowed the bleeding. He shrugged out of his coat and draped it over Ianto, tucking it around him. He laid his hand on top of Ianto’s, and squeezed it through a layer of wool still warm with Jack’s body-heat.

“I do think the bleeding is slowing down,” Gwen said, “and that’ll buy us some time. But if it nicked his spleen, that’s going to require surgery. We need to get him to hospital as soon as we can. Any idea about how we’re going to deal with our pest problem?”

"Other than just mowing the fucking vultures down out of the sky? No," Jack said, grimacing. And that method hadn't served them very well so far. He carefully shifted Ianto so that his head was in Jack’s lap. He was shivering a little less, now that he was covered in Jack's coat, but he still looked terrible. They had an hour, Jack thought, maybe two at most. Jack stroked his hand through Ianto's hair. It was damp with cold sweat.

He fumbled his mobile out of his pocket and dialed the TARDIS. “Doctor,” he said, when the voicemail picked up, “Doctor, we need you. Ianto’s hurt. Please come back. Please.”

He hung up.

***

“What the hell are you doing here?” Donna demanded, hands on her hips.

John gulped. He had no idea. But Donna was looking at him like he’d better come up with one right quick, so he just started talking and hoped he’d hit on something that made sense. “I’m sorry! I just . . . it was there, standing open, and all of the sudden I was just - I wanted to know . . . I don’t know.“ He shrugged, helplessly. “I wasn’t trying to hide, I swear.”

No luck with the sense-making, then.

Donna sighed. “I believe you. Which doesn’t make this any less of a problem.”

“You can take me home, can’t you?” John asked, unable to prevent the edge of desperation that crept into his voice. “Just take me home and drop me off.”

“I could,” Donna said slowly. “But . . . hmm.”

He didn’t much like her tone, nor the speculative way she was watching him. “What ‘hmm’? Not ‘hmm’! Home! Before _he_ comes back and finds out I’m here!”

Donna suddenly lost the abstracted look. She crossed her arms over her chest and eyed John critically. “Scared of him, are you?”

“Not scared, just - look, he’s not going to be happy to find me here.”

Donna raised her eyebrows. “How do you know that?”

John hesitated. “I just do.”

“Interesting,” she said, again in that speculative tone. John got an unpleasant sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. Donna tilted her head to one side. “There was a rift spike while we were gone, wasn’t there? And now the vultures are all pumped up on rift energy?”

“Yeah,” John said, frowning, “how did you know?”

Donna tapped her temple. “The thing with Rose created a kind of echo in the time vortex, which is making all sorts of ripples. The Doctor would’ve thought of it, too, if he could think at all right now. But he’s . . . indisposed. That means it’s up to me, and I’ve been working on a plan. I think you could help me out.”

“How?” John asked suspiciously. Not that he didn’t want to help, but the sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach hadn’t got any better.

“I need someone with highly specialized skills. Time Lord skills. The Doctor’s being a ninny, so that leaves you and me, Blue Suit.”

“Uh, no,” John said, fighting a sudden surge of nausea. “No, it doesn’t. I don’t have any skills, much less Time Lord ones. I don’t even remember what it’s like to be a Time Lord. I’m just me. Just John.”

She smiled. “No, you’re not. You’re not ‘just John’ any more than I’m ‘just Donna.’ Don’t lie to me,” she added, rather abruptly, when he started to object. “Don’t stand here and tell me you don’t remember anything. Because we share half a brain, you and me, and I know you’re starting to remember. So don’t bother with lying. It won’t work and it’ll piss me off.”

“No, I - fine,” he conceded, when she quirked an eyebrow at him. “I remember a little, but not enough for something like this.” He hesitated, fighting what he suspected was an innate desire to poke at something until it either poked back or bit his finger. But it was no use. He had to know. “What’s your plan, anyway?”

Donna leaned her hip against the console. “I want to open the Rift.”

John felt his jaw drop. " _What?_ Are you insane? That's mad. Even _I_ know that."

"You have a better idea?” Donna asked, somewhat snappishly.

"I’m sure Jack and Ianto will come up with something,” John said. Donna snorted her skepticism. He glared. “And even if they don’t, that doesn't mean you should try just any hare-brained scheme!"

"Of course it does. And I don't think this one is nearly as a hare-brained as some of the lunatic schemes the Doctor's come up with in the past."

John had to admit that she was probably right. He’d hardly even spoken to the Doctor, but there were parts of John’s own brain that felt a bit . . . frantic. And they were growing more so. He shoved that thought away, discomfited. "But what good would opening the Rift do? Wouldn’t all of Cardiff just fall in?”

Donna shook her head. "Not if I have anything to say about it. Torchwood has something called a rift manipulator. I could program it to take only the void vultures."

"Really," John said, raising an eyebrow. "And if you're wrong?"

Donna grimaced. "Cardiff falls into the Rift and we all die horrible deaths. But I think it'll work."

"Oh, all right, then," John said brightly, "as long as you think it'll work."

"I do," Donna said, seriously. "But I need your help."

“Ah,” John said, holding a finger up, “and that’s where you run into problems. I’m human, thanks very much. I’m not a Time Lord. I can't just flip a switch. I can't - Donna, I can't." He shook his head and turned away, crossing his arms over his chest.

"John," she said quietly, "you can. It's happening already and you're not even trying."

He was silent. She was right. He knew she was. His fascination with the TARDIS, his implicit understanding of how the Doctor would react if he knew he was here, his affinity for the Torchwood mainframe - it was all of a piece. John swallowed. He couldn't bring himself to say it. Not until her hand squeezed his shoulder gently. "What if I don't want to?" he whispered.

There was a moment of silence. “Oh," she said at last.

He turned to face her. "I don't - today, I told Ianto I loved him and he was shocked - not by the sentiment, but because I said it with no provocation. What does that say about the Doctor? Why is everyone so eager to have him back, anyway? Because he's brilliant? I could be brilliant, too.” He shook his head. “I just don't know if I want to be him anymore. I think I might want to be me."

Donna was quiet. "Martha told me once,” she said at last, “about this time the Doctor - the other one, that is - well, actually, I guess it was before you were created, so you were him at the time. Anyway, he had to become human, without any of his memories. They were hiding, she never said from what, and he became a schoolteacher in 1913. And he fell in love." She smiled, wistfully. "I don't have all his memories, but I remember her a little. Not her face, but I remember . . . I remember kissing her. It's mad," she added with a laugh, "but also beautiful. And sad. He didn't want to change back either. But he did. He had to."

John lifted his chin. "Maybe I don't have to. We could hire someone else for the tech. I could go to medical school -"

"John," she said, shaking her head, "we need you. All of you."

"That's not _me_!" he burst out. "It's _him_ , and he's - he's so fucked up that he can’t even tell Ianto he loves him. And Ianto says it doesn't matter, but it does, Donna, you know it does." He looked away, throat tightening. "I don't want to lose that."

Donna shrugged. "So don't."

He looked back at her. "What?"

"So don't," she repeated, crossing her arms over her chest. "Who says you have to?"

"But . . . when I go back to being the Doctor -"

She shrugged. "Seems to me you don't have to go back to anything. It’s not going to wipe you out. You'll remember this conversation. You'll remember what it felt like to tell Ianto you loved him. There’s nothing stopping you from telling him you love him as often as you like." She bumped her shoulder against his, conspiratorially. "Listen. I'm part-Doctor, too, and there are things in my head that weren't there before, and believe you me, I wish I didn’t understand him as well as I do. But if I were as in love with someone as you are with Ianto and Jack, nothing could stop me from telling them. And there's nothing stopping you, either."

"Oh," John said, in a small voice. "I guess - I guess that's true."

"Of course it's true," Donna said, leaning back with a satisfied nod, “and that is why you’re going to look into the heart of the TARDIS, so you can get your memories back and we can save Cardiff from a ravening horde of void vultures. How does that sound?”

"Wait - _what_?"

“Well, how else are you going to do it?” Donna asked, in the entirely too reasonable tone of someone who knew her idea was perfectly insane and was choosing to ignore it. “You have to want it, though. You can’t go into this half-cocked.”

“Yeah, well, that might be a problem. I can’t pretend I’m not lukewarm about this.”

Donna sighed, patting him on the shoulder. “Well, we’re in the vortex now. We have time for you to think about it.”

“Really?”

“Yup. Take a walk,” she suggested. She cocked her head to one side and got a very strange expression. “There’s a garden, three doors down. It’s nice. But, John,” she added, as he turned to go, “don’t take too long, all right? Theoretically we have all the time in all the universes, but in reality -”

“I know,” John said, and realized that he did. Timelines were like Shrödinger’s cat. Anything was possible until you plopped yourself down inside of one, got a look at the cat, and realized you were five minutes too late and there was no going back. The longer he waited, the higher the chance that something would make him look inside the box. They were in the vortex, but that didn’t mean they were untouchable.

The door to the promised garden was standing open. There was a breeze wafting through; it smelled like rain and sweet, floral things, the names of which tried to bubble up in the back of John’s mind. John let them go with an effort. He didn’t need to know everything, he told himself. It was enough to know that it smelled good, like plants and flowers and green growing things. It didn’t matter whether it smelled like jasmine or roses or - or those blue orchids from Ghantifordrit’lliluxtili that only bloomed on the full moon and were so aromatic that all the locals went about with oxygen masks for three days.

John sighed. Then he stepped inside the garden and realized what Donna had done.

The Doctor was sitting on the grass with his knees pulled up to his chest, staring up at the artificial sky the TARDIS had thoughtfully provided. John froze, but it was too late. The Doctor turned his head to look at him, eyes widening and then swiftly narrowing. “What are you doing here?” he demanded.

John looked away. It was so very disconcerting to look at the Doctor and know that those were someone else’s expressions on his own face. “You left rather the Hub abruptly.”

“But why were you on board to begin with?” the Doctor said, shoving himself to his feet. “On _my TARDIS_ -”

“It used to be mine, too,” John said quietly.

The Doctor came to a screeching halt, mid-tirade. “You remember.”

“A bit,” John admitted. “Enough.” He looked away, gazing around at the garden. It was truly the most beautiful place he could remember being. There were flowers everywhere, climbing up and down and over some very aesthetically pleasing ruins; the weeping willow by the little brook was lovely and sad, and a tree with purple leaves gave just the right amount of sun dappled shade. “This was my TARDIS, too,” he repeated, “and you never thought about what losing her would do to me.” He remembered it all too clearly: the sudden, sharp sting of abandonment, the ache of knowing he would never see her again, the phantom pain of those first few weeks without her. “You left her standing open. I had to know why looking at her hurt.”

“Ah,” the Doctor said, rocking back on his heels. “Yes, well. Shouldn’t make a habit of that. Now we have a problem.”

John laughed quietly. “You don’t know the half of it.” The Doctor raised an eyebrow. John shrugged. “Donna has this mad plan. She needs someone - if not a Time Lord, then someone with those sorts of skills, to help her. Except I know enough about being you to know I don’t really care to repeat the experience.”

“I see,” the Doctor said. He flopped down on the ground, a sudden sprawl of long limbs. “Well, can’t blame you there. I don’t even want to be me, most days.”

John seated himself more decorously on a bright red log a few feet away. “Yeah, I know that, too. I notice that hasn’t stopped you from being a self-righteous bastard.”

The Doctor snorted. “ _Nothing_ has ever stopped me being a self-righteous bastard. Including regeneration. I have to say, I envy you that; you might’ve lost the TARDIS and your time sense, but you also managed to escape the chorus of nine other self-righteous bastards in the back of your own head.” He leaned over and clutched his head in his hands. “They’re especially loud today,” he added, muffled, and then sighed, lifting his head. “I don’t know what to tell you, John. I can’t blame you for not wanting to be me.”

“Well, I don’t think I have much choice. It’s already coming back to me, whether I want it or not.”

The Doctor shook his head. “Of course you have a choice. Building a connection is hard. Breaking it is easy. If you really want to be John Noble, I can do that for you. Permanently.”

John blinked. “Really?”

“Yep. But there’d be no going back. Once it’s done, it’s done.”

John was quiet for a moment, thinking . . . he wasn’t even sure what he was thinking. Wondering, perhaps, if it took more courage to say _yes_ or _no_. “What about Donna’s plan?” he asked at last. “She wants to open the rift. She thinks she could program the rift manipulator to swallow only the void vultures. Is that even possible?”

The Doctor’s gaze turned abstracted, as though he was doing equations in his head. He probably was. “Maybe. She must be planning on using the TARDIS somehow; no rift manipulator Torchwood has could possibly be precise enough for the job. It’d be better if there were a third person - two for the TARDIS and one for the rift manipulator.”

John frowned. “You’d help?”

The Doctor sighed. “Yes, of course. As though I’d . . . well, I reckon I can see how you’d think I wouldn’t. But I would. We could do it without you,” he added with a sideways glance, “maybe. But it’d be better if we didn’t have to.” He reached into a pocket and pulled out a mobile. “Universal coverage,” he said, holding it up, “and it’s been going off for ever since we left. I think it’s probably for you.” He tossed it to John, who caught it reflexively, and stood. “Donna and I will be in the console room when you’re ready.”

John waited until he’d gone. Then he sat looking at the mobile for a minute or two before ringing the Doctor’s voicemail. If the phone had been going off, then the box was already open. It was time to get a look at the cat.

The first message made him smile. _Something we’d very much like back._ The second message drained all the blood from his face. Jack’s voice - John thought he’d give just about anything to never hear Jack sound like that again.

Everything was suddenly clear. Perhaps there had never really been any other option. He was John Noble and he was the Doctor. John Noble could tell Ianto he loved him, but it was the Doctor who could save his life. He was grateful for the chance to get to know John, and he would do his best to hang on to as much of him as he could, but that wasn’t who Jack and Ianto needed right now.

John forced himself to listen to both messages again. Then he rang Jack’s mobile and held his breath, praying he’d pick up.

“Doctor?” Jack answered, breathlessly.

“No, Jack, it’s me. John,” he clarified, realizing that he and the Doctor would, of course, sound exactly the same. “I just - Ianto, is he -”

“Stable for now. Not - not all right, though. John, I don’t know -”

“We have a plan,” John interrupted him. “The Doctor and Donna and I. We’ve got it under control.” A bit of an overstatement, perhaps, but Jack sounded like a lost little boy and it made John’s heart hurt. “It’s a bit mad, but we think it’ll work. We hope.”

“What -”

“Probably better you don’t know.” Forgiveness versus permission and all that. Something told John that Jack might be pissed afterward, though he couldn’t remember why. “Please, can I talk to Ianto?”

“Yeah, just a second.” There were muffled noises as Jack handed the phone over.

"John?" Ianto's voice was breathless and strained.

"Yeah, it’s me. How are you?"

"Okay. Well. No. My head's all funny and it hurts to breathe." He swallowed, audibly. "Jack looks scared."

"Yeah," John breathed. He closed his eyes. "Look, Donna and the Doctor and I - well, we’ve got a plan, and it's pretty much completely mad, but we're going to try it anyway. And I just - I wanted to say that I love you. And that I'll always love you, even if I can't say it. I'll see you after, all right?”

There was a very long pause. Then Ianto said, "Yeah. Love you, too" and the line went dead. John realized suddenly that he hadn’t told Jack. Not that it seemed he and Jack usually said such things to each other, but it seemed all of the sudden vitally important that Jack know. Just in case. His hands shook a little, but he managed a text with minimal difficulty: I LOVE YOU JACK. TAKE CARE OF HIM. SEE YOU SOON. _Send._


	8. Chapter 8

This, Ianto decided, was what sheer misery felt like. His head ached, he was nauseated and freezing, it hurt to breathe, and his clothes were soaked in blood. It was starting to rain, so he would shortly be wet, as well.

But he kept his mouth shut, because God knew there wasn't a damn thing anyone could do about it. Jack had already covered him in his coat and tied a bandage around the wound; now he and Rose and Gwen were trying desperately to come up with a Plan B, just in case Donna’s idea was as mad as they suspected. Maybe he could sleep through this, he thought. Close his eyes and wake up warm and dry in Jack's bed in the Hub . . .

A hand stroked through his hair. Ianto looked up at Jack who, shifted his head gently into his lap. "How you doing?" Jack asked.

Ianto considered this. He’d achieved a sort of vague numbness that probably didn’t bode well long-term but was rather pleasant in the short run. "I’m okay.”

Jack didn’t seem to believe him. He frowned. "We need to get you somewhere warm and dry." He craned his neck, attempting to survey the area while sitting on the ground. "Maybe one of the patrol cars - you could stretch out along the back seat, and we could turn the heater on."

As amazing as that sounded, Ianto knew it wouldn’t work. "Don’t think that’s a good idea. If I lose any more blood . . .”

"I know,” Jack said. He pressed a kiss to Ianto’s knuckles. “I just hate seeing you so uncomfortable.”

“Not my favorite thing either,” Ianto said. He closed his eyes and turned his face into the warm fabric of Jack’s trousers. The numbness gave way to a dizzy, lightheaded sensation. An hour was probably optimistic, he reflected. He was strangely undisturbed by the thought, but it made him bolder than usual. He forced his eyes open and looked up at Jack. Upside down and in the dark, it was hard to read his expression, but his hand was almost painfully tight around Ianto’s. “Jack, I need you to promise me something.”

“Anything,” Jack said.

Ianto licked his lips. They were very dry. “Promise me that if I don’t make it, you and John will take care of each other. I need to know that you two will be okay.”

Jack shook his head. “You’re going to be fine.”

“Don’t, Jack,” Ianto said with a frown. “I need you to do this. Please.”

Jack looked away. “Ianto, I . . . if it were just me, I could promise you that. But the Doctor . . . I’ve been in love with him for most of my life, but nothing happened until you were there. You’re the fulcrum. I don’t even know if he’ll want me if you - without you.”

“He will,” Ianto told him. Talking was becoming difficult, but this was too important to let go. This might be the last thing he ever did, and he was damn well going to make it happen. “Promise me. Please. Decide that the two of you won’t shut each other out and wallow in pain until there’s nothing left between you. You’ll need each other.”

“Stop,” Jack begged, “just stop. You’re talking like you’re - and I can’t -” He shook his head.

“Promise me,” Ianto said, ruthless. The dizziness and disconnection were growing worse.

“I promise,” Jack said at last. “I’ll do everything I can.”

Ianto sighed. “Thank you.” He closed his eyes. He felt very strange, as though the only real part of him was his cheek, pressed against Jack’s thigh. Jack made a strange, choked noise and gripped his hand even harder.

He thought at first that the rumble was a dream. He groaned and pressed closer to Jack, but it only got louder. Then there was shouting and Jack was shaking his shoulder and yelling at him. "Ianto! Ianto, you have to stand up, we have to go. The Rift - the Rift is opening!"

"You're kidding me," Ianto mumbled through lips gone numb. But the ground was bucking beneath him, just like it had the night Bilis Manger had tricked them.

Jack crouched down and dragged Ianto into his arms to swing him into a bridal carry. "Come on, come on, we have to go."

"I can't, Jack," Ianto groaned. His wound was like fire in his side.

"You have to," Jack said through gritted teeth. He lifted his head. "GWEN! ROSE!" he shouted.

Gwen was suddenly on his other side, helping Jack push himself to his feet with Ianto in his arms. Ianto gasped in pain and felt a warm trickle of blood seep from the wound in his abdomen. They began staggering, stumbling away from the Plass. Twisting his head around, Ianto could see the Cardiff police ahead of them - far ahead, most of them. Void vultures circled overhead, screeching.

" _This_ was their _plan_?" Jack yelled as Rose joined them. " _This_?"

"We knew it was insane," Gwen grunted. The ground shook viciously, sending them all to their knees. Ianto couldn’t help the cry of pain that tore itself from his throat.

"I can't," he gasped, "Jack, please - you have to go."

“When hell freezes over.” Jack managed to get to his feet with Ianto in his arms again, but it was no use; the ground bucked and Jack lost his balance, sending them both to the ground. Ianto nearly passed out from the pain of impact, and the trickle of blood became a torrent. Jack stared at him in horror.

Ianto lifted his left hand, since his right was now covered in blood, and touched Jack’s face. "Go. You can't let yourself get eaten by the Rift.”

Jack shook his head. "And I'm supposed to leave you?”

"You'll come back for me. You and the Doctor - our Doctor."

Jack shook his head again, more emphatically. “He did this. I'll never forgive him."

"Don't say that," Ianto whispered. "Jack. Don't say that. You promised me. Be angry if you need to be, but he never meant this to happen. It's not his fault." Another tremor shook the ground. "Go. Go now."

"Jack," Rose said, putting a hand on Jack's shoulder. "I’m so sorry. Ianto’s right."

"Ianto," Gwen said, with tears in her voice. She reached out to grasp his hand and squeezed it, hard. He squeezed back weakly and smiled.

“No,” Jack said flatly. “You two go. I’m staying.”

“But, Jack -” Gwen started.

“Just go!” he shouted, waving them off. “We’ll be fine.”

Rose grabbed Gwen’s hand. “C’mon, Gwen.”

“But -”

“It’s his choice. Come on!”

They disappeared into the darkness, the sound of their footsteps swallowed by the next tremor. The ground cracked a few feet away with a sound like a gunshot, and the earth beneath the Plass seemed to groan. Jack dropped down beside Ianto and rolled on top of him. Ianto whimpered, and Jack pushed himself up onto his elbows to take some of his own weight. “You’re an idiot,” Ianto managed.

Jack pressed their foreheads together. “You didn’t really think I was going to leave you here alone.”

“I hoped so,” Ianto said, “because that’s the smart thing to do.” Another tremor shook the ground; Jack hunched over him, moving his hand to cover the back of Ianto’s neck. Ianto waited for it to pass and then sighed. “But thank you. It’s insane, dangerous -”

“Don’t forget heroic.”.

“- and _stupid_. But I’m glad not to be alone.”

“Always,” Jack said, kissing his forehead again. Ianto turned his head so he could see the rest of the Plass. He wasn't afraid, he decided, not really. He was too tired to be afraid but not so tired that he wanted to sleep through the end.

And so he was watching the Millennium Centre when lightning lanced across the sky, bringing with it the biggest tremor yet. There was an almighty crack, and the next bolt of lightning illuminated a Plass rent in two. With the next quake, the screams of a hundred void vultures filled the Plass. Jack held him tight. “This is it,” he muttered. “Ianto, I -”

Anything else Jack might have said was swallowed by a sudden roaring. The earth collapsed beneath the vultures, swallowing them whole, and the ones in the air vanished in a flash of lightning that burned across Ianto's retinas.

For a long moment, he was utterly deaf and blind and thought perhaps he'd died. Then his vision cleared; the Plass was silent aside from the howling of the wind. He and Jack were the only living things left on it.

Actually, scratch that. Jack’s body was heavier than it had been, sprawled across Ianto’s chest. He struggled to breathe under the dead - _ha_ \- weight, but there was no way to shift him. Ianto let his eyes slide shut. He was only resting, he told himself, while he waited for Jack to come back.

Ianto’s body had gone numb again when a wheezy, mechanical sound filled his ears. Ianto forced his eyes open, not quite able to believe it; it was a noise he hadn't always been very fond of, but it was suddenly most beautiful sound he'd ever heard.

He had never been so grateful to be lying on metal grating.

"It worked," he heard Donna Noble saying in an astonished voice. "It _worked_. They're gone, every last one of them."

"That's brilliant, Donna," John said, dropping to his knees beside Ianto and Jack. "Help me shift Jack, please."

"Oh, right," Donna said, coming round the console. Ianto could just glimpse her sensible white trainers as they came to a sudden stop. "Good God, that's a lot of blood."

"Some of it’s Jack’s, but any way you look at it, there’s still too much," John said, grunting as they shifted Jack. Ianto started to take a deep breath in relief and came up short against the pain. “I need the antigrav stretcher from the medbay, could you -"

"Yup," Donna said. The sensible white trainers vanished.

Ianto felt John's fingers stroke gently into his hair. "Ianto," he said, leaning over him, "Ianto, I'm here, all right? You're safe."

"John," Ianto croaked.

John shook his head. "No. Ianto. It's me."

Ianto stared up at him. Was he hallucinating? He could have sworn it was John leaning over him, John's fingers in his hair. But there was something else, too, some familiar, beloved spark in his eyes - _oh_. "Doctor?" he whispered.

The Doctor nodded. "You’re going to be all right. Donna and I will take care of you." His lips brushed Ianto’s forehead, but the sensation was very far away and he felt as though he were falling. The last thing he heard, before the dark claimed him completely, was the Doctor telling him he loved him.

 _I love you, too_ , Ianto tried to say, but it was too late.

He woke slowly, to the sensation of being warm and cared for and blessedly free of pain. He couldn't move, but he wasn’t much bothered about it. He came awake sense by sense: first touch - softness below, warmth all around, a slight sore spot in his left hand, and fingers curled around his own; then smell - a strange, alien scent and an all too familiar medical smell; and finally sound.

“- completely reckless,” Jack was saying, in a furious voice an octave lower than usual.

“You’re one to talk about reckless,” a Doctor retorted. Had to be theirs, Ianto decided. The other Doctor wouldn’t be holding his hand. “At least we had a plan. What were you going to do, let Ianto bleed to death on the Plass?”

If Ianto could have moved, he’d have winced. “Better than getting eaten by the Rift,” Jack said, voice rising. “Do you have any idea how close -”

“I’m the one that bloody well shocked his heart!” The Doctor’s hand tightened on Ianto’s. “I know exactly how much blood he lost, I know exactly how extensive the internal damage was, and I know exactly how close we came to losing him. You don’t get to lecture me.”

“The hell I don’t. You opened the Rift. Deliberately.”

“Yes, I did,” the Doctor said evenly. “And I’d do it again. There was nothing else left to try. It saved Ianto’s life, and Rose’s life, and Gwen’s life, and the lives of thousands of people I don’t even know. Are you really going to stand here and condemn me for it?”

Ianto finally managed to pry his eyes open. He was in the TARDIS, in what had to be the ship’s infirmary, hooked up to an IV and monitoring equipment. Neither the Doctor on his right or Jack on his left had noticed he was awake yet; they were staring at each other, Jack’s jaw set stubbornly and the Doctor’s chin lifted in defiance. Ianto tried to marshal his mental forces enough to talk them down.

“Yes,” Jack said, in a much quieter voice. “I am. You opened the Rift. I can’t have you in the Hub.”

The Doctor’s eyes widened. “You - what -”

“Jack, no,” Ianto rasped. “You can’t.”

Their gazes swung to him. "Ianto, thank all Time," the Doctor said. He kissed Ianto's knuckles, then Ianto's forehead, and finally his lips. "How are you feeling?"

“Fine, except for the utter shite Jack is talking,” Ianto said, pushing the Doctor away to glare at Jack.

“It’s not shite,” Jack said shortly. He looked like hell, Ianto thought, startled. He was covered in blood all the way down his front, and his hair was matted with it as well - it must have been a blow to the head from some sort of debris on the Plass that had killed him. “He opened the Rift.”

"You -" Ianto choked on the rest of the sentence and had to swallow several times before he could continue. "Did you forget that I opened the Rift, too? Owen _shot_ you and you died, twice, and we let Abbadon through and -"

Jack shook his head. "I didn't forget. But you didn't know what it would do. You were tricked and manipulated. The Doctor knew. He knew what he was risking, he knew how dangerous it was, he knew that it went against everything Torchwood is here to protect. And he did it anyway.”

He was entirely serious, Ianto realized. "I don't understand,” he said, clutching at the Doctor’s hand. “You love us."

“I do,” Jack said, looking away. “But that doesn’t matter.” He swallowed. “The Doctor and Donna are leaving as soon as you’re well enough to be moved to your own flat. Our Do - John will go with them.”

“No,” Ianto said, shaking his head in denial. He tried to sit up, but he knew, even before the Doctor pushed him back with a gentle hand to his sternum, that it was a bad idea. He choked back a groan. “No, Jack, you can’t - you can’t punish him for doing something that worked.”

"It could’ve just as easily not have," Jack said harshly. "All of Cardiff could've fallen into the Rift. Not to mention -" He stopped.

"Not to mention what?” Ianto demanded. “Jack. Not to mention _what_?"

"You could have died," Jack said, very quietly. "You almost did. Your heart stopped. Twice."

"But I didn't die. See," Ianto said, grabbing Jack's hand and holding it to his chest. Jack hadn’t touched him at all since he’d woken up, and he went very still now, as though trying not to pull away. "Heart still beating. Lungs still breathing. And if they weren't, it still wouldn't be anyone’s fault. I got hurt. It happens in our line of work. You can’t do this."

“I can. I have to.” He looked up at Doctor. “I’m sorry.”

That was the last straw. Ianto abruptly went from desperate to furious. He pushed Jack’s hand away. “Fuck you, Jack. Don’t stand there and tell us you’re sorry. You _don’t_ have to do this.”

Jack was silent.

The Doctor’s fingers had gone limp around Ianto’s. “I,” he said, throat working. “I should pack, then.” He bent, swiftly, and kissed Ianto. “I love you. I promise I won’t go without -”

Ianto mustered every ounce of strength he had and grabbed hold of the Doctor’s shirt. “You’re not going anywhere without me,” he told him.

Gently, the Doctor disentangled Ianto’s fingers from his shirt. “You need to rest,” he told him. “I’ll be back as soon as I can, I promise.” He kissed Ianto’s hand again and left, refusing to look at Jack as he passed him.

Ianto and Jack looked at each other. “Ianto,” Jack began tentatively.

“I hope,” Ianto said, in as measured a tone as he could manage, “that you know what this means for you and me.” Jack looked away, confirming Ianto’s suspicions. “Yes, I thought so. Now, please. Just get out.”

To Jack’s credit, he didn’t try to argue and he didn’t make any excuses. He turned and walked away. But he paused in the doorway and looked back. "Ianto. For what it's worth, I'm s -"

"Save it, Jack,” Ianto said, lifting his head to glare at him. “It's worth fuck all."

***

The Plass was a wasteland.

Rose knew it was eerier in the pre-dawn gray than it would be in broad daylight, but that didn’t stop her shivering as she took in the wreckage. The shops and the Millennium Centre had been mostly spared, but the Plass itself was a heap of rubble. Worst of all was the gaping maw, like the mouth of an enormous beast, that split it into two cracked pieces.

Rose and Gwen stood staring at it, silently. There wasn’t a single void vulture to be seen. There was also no sign of Jack and Ianto.

“They’re not here,” Gwen said at last. She was almost gray with fatigue. Rose felt like she looked.

“Jack would’ve taken Ianto into the Hub as soon as possible,” Rose pointed out. It was hard to believe they might have survived, but she couldn’t stand to see the hopeless look on Gwen’s face. “Don’t give up yet.”

“I know,” Gwen said, rubbing her face. “I know. Come on.”

The lift wasn’t working, but the tourist office was nearly untouched. Rose followed Gwen down into the Hub, hardly knowing what to expect. It might have been devastated by the Rift opening, or flooded from broken water mains, or a gas line might have exploded - it was impossible to predict.

Just about the last thing she’d expected to find was the Doctor and Donna, bickering happily in a completely intact Hub. “You put too much pressure on the grav stabilizers,” the Doctor was saying, gesturing enthusiastically toward the TARDIS, parked in her usual spot. “She wants a gentle hand, not a bull in a china shop.”

“Says the man with the mallet,” Donna shot back indignantly. “If I put too much pressure on them, it’s because you do, too, or have you forgotten whose brain I share?”

“You don’t share anyone’s brain,” the Doctor retorted, looking vaguely horrified.

“Well, thank God for small mercies!”

Rose nudged Gwen. “We should sell popcorn, yeah?”

Gwen managed a smile. “I’d be more amused under other circumstances,” she muttered back. “OI!” she shouted. The Doctor broke off mid-tirade and he and Donna turned to stare at them. “Someone needs to fill me in right now. Where are Jack and Ianto?”

“In the TARDIS,” Donna assured her. “Ianto’s fine.”

The Doctor snorted. “I think that might overstating it. _Not dead_ is about all I’m comfortable with when someone needs to be resuscitated twice. Someone other than Jack, I mean. But don’t worry, your Doctor is quite handy in the medbay. He’s got him well stabilized now.”

Gwen let her breath out. “That’s - that’s good. I suppose Jack will be busy for awhile?”

Donna nodded. “He said to tell you you’re in charge.”

“Fabulous,” Gwen muttered. She rubbed her eyes and blinked a few times. “Right, then. I told Andy I’d ring him when I had any news about Ianto. I should do that and find out what they need from us. The whole city's a right mess. Care to lend a hand?” she asked Rose.

“Sure. Just - in a minute,” Rose said. She glanced toward the Doctor, who was pointedly studying a mildewy stain on the wall of the Hub.

“I’ll come with you,” Donna said cheerfully. “I’m good at mopping up.” She followed Gwen up to Jack’s office, pausing just long enough to poke the Doctor in the ribs and tell him, rather too loudly, not to be a coward.

Rose and the Doctor were left looking at each other. Or, in the Doctor’s case, not looking at each other. "I don’t know about you,” Rose said at last, “but after a night like that, I need a cuppa. Care to join me?”

The Doctor clearly didn’t, but he nodded anyway and followed her into the kitchen. She put the kettle on and retrieved the milk and sugar. “Long night,” she remarked, leaning her hip against the counter as she waited for the water to boil. “I hate this bit. The crisis is over and all I want to do is crash, but I can’t yet.”

He cleared his throat. “Yeah. Not my favorite bit either.”

“I’d have never guessed,” she said dryly. The water was ready. She poured them both a cup, with appropriate amounts of milk and sugar, and seated herself at the table. She allowed her shoulders to fall, just a little, as she sipped, waiting.

“How are you feeling?” he asked at last.

She shrugged. “Tired and jittery, but I’m fine. And according to Jack, I’ll be fine for a long time, as long as I don’t travel in time.”

He swallowed. “I’m sorry.”

She sighed, suddenly weary beyond words. “It isn’t your fault, Doctor. Of all of this, that was the part you had no control over. What I don’t understand,” she added, before he could reply, “is why you ran out on me.”

He stared unblinkingly down at his tea. “That’s what I do, Rose. I run away from things I don’t want to deal with. I’ve made a career - no. I’ve made a _lifestyle_ out of it. And I’m sorry, if that’s not what you want to hear, but it’s who I am.”

She smiled, ruefully. “I know. I just . . . I always thought I was the exception to the rule. Arrogant, I know, but there you have it.” She took a slow sip of tea, taking comfort in the heavy warmth of the cup in her hands. “Well, what’s done is done. I'll be all right. Jack will help me, and I know how to start over." She wondered if it would be easier this time. She was older and had had some practice. But it didn’t feel easier.

He raised his head and looked her in the eye for the first time. “I won’t visit. You know that, don’t you?”

She nodded. “I know. It’s all right. Just . . . promise you won't leave without saying good-bye."

He nodded. She stood, steeling herself to walk away. But she’d barely reached the threshold when she found Donna blocking her path. "And just where do you think you're going?" Donna demanded. She pointed at the chair Rose had just vacated. "Sit down," she ordered. "You, too, spaceman," she added to the Doctor. He sat, then frowned, as though surprised by his own obedience. "Gwen’s on the phone with her police officer friend. I’ve got five minutes and I’m going to make the most of them. I didn't spend six months traveling with this one through all of space and time, listening to him moan about how much he missed you, just to watch you both give up."

"Donna," the Doctor sighed.

"Oh shut up. Rose, tell the Doctor why you came back."

Rose blinked. "I - isn't it obvious? I missed him. I waited for it to get better, I built a life for myself over there, thinking that someday it would be enough. But it never was.” She looked at him. "I missed you so much it hurt."

"Donna," the Doctor broke in, a note of real pleading in his voice, "please. This won't work."

"What won't work?" Rose asked, glancing from him to Donna and back again.

The Doctor shook his head, eyes riveted on Donna. "I won't do it. It's cruel. I'll forget to come back or miss by ten years. I won't promise something I know I'll fail at."

"You won't do either of those things," Donna said firmly, "because I won't let you."

"Stop, please," Rose said quietly. "Donna, if the Doctor can't -"

"Oh, he can."

"- or won’t," she finished forcibly, "then that's the end of it. I don't want him strong-armed into anything. Now." She swallowed. "Is it safe for me to go into the TARDIS to collect my things?"

The Doctor cleared his throat. "Yes. As long as she's not in flight, you should be fine."

"Thank you." Rose stood and left the kitchen.

The main floor of the Hub was deserted, thank God, so there was no one to remark on her tears. She was fumbling for her TARDIS key when the door of the ship opened, surprising her into taking a stumbling step back. The other Doctor - Jack and Ianto’s - pulled up short.

“Oh,” he said. “Hi.”

“Hi,” she said, swiping ineffectually at her face with her hand. So strange, to be facing this man who both was and wasn’t the one who’d just broken her heart for the second time. In some alternative universe, she thought, the Doctor had succeeded in dumping them in the other universe together, as though he were some sort of consolation prize for her. Would that have been better? Could they have made each other happy? It didn’t matter now, she supposed.

She gave him a weak smile and moved to slip past him, into the TARDIS. It was only then that she really looked at him enough to see anything other than a near-clone of her own Doctor. He looked very strange, she thought - disheveled and pale, almost shell-shocked. Her hand flew to her mouth. “Oh God, is Ianto -”

“No, he’s fine. Jack’s with him.”

“Oh, good.” She frowned. “Why aren’t you with them?” He shook his head, reaching out to steady himself against the TARDIS. Rose was suddenly afraid he might fall over. She glanced around and spied the sofa she’d been sitting on earlier. “Here, come sit down,” she said, drawing him over. He didn’t resist. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

The Doctor’s eyes were riveted on the door of the TARDIS, which was slightly ajar. "Jack is . . . very angry with me for opening the Rift. Furious, as a matter of fact, and not entirely rational at the moment. Ianto came very close to dying. And it’s true, what I did was very dangerous.”

"Wasn’t that Donna’s idea? And my - I mean, the other Doctor signed off on it, too.”

“Yes," the Doctor said heavily, "but once I got my memories back I endorsed it wholeheartedly. Recklessly and dangerously, Jack says. I should've known better.” He tore his gaze away from the TARDIS to look at her. “Never make anyone your everything, Rose. I've just been sacked, dumped, and evicted, all at once."

Oh _Jack_. "I know the feeling," was all she said.

The Doctor grimaced. "I thought you might." He leaned his head on the back of the sofa and stared up at the ceiling. "The irony is, I was heartbroken when your Doctor kicked me out before. I'd only really just got over it, and now . . ." He shook his head without lifting it. "I bet Jack hasn't even asked your Doctor if he'll have me. Bet he won't. Too confusing. Not enough room in the TARDIS for him and me. Enough for him and Donna, though, and don't ask me how that works."

Rose put her hand on his shoulder. "He won't just drop you anywhere."

"Doesn't matter," the Doctor said bleakly. "There’s only one place I really want to be."

She sighed. "Yeah, well. I'd trade you in a heartbeat." She reached over and took his hand. "Things will be okay again. For both of us."

The Doctor nodded. "They'll be okay. But not - not good. Not -” his voice caught “- brilliant.”

"Maybe not," Rose admitted softly. "Or maybe they will. Someday. You don't know any better than I do."

"No, I suppose I don't." He smiled weakly at her, before straightening up, scrubbing both hands through his hair, and getting to his feet. “I need to get my things. No point in drawing it out.”

“Yeah,” she said, following his example. “Guess not.” She hesitated. “Good luck.”

“You, too,” he said. She watched him climb the stairs and disappear into Jack’s office. Then she took a deep breath and consciously straightened her spine. This was nothing she hadn’t prepared for, after all. Her duffel bag was sitting on the floor of her wardrobe, waiting to be picked up.

The console room was a mess. There were cables and wires hanging off the console and snaking down the stairs or through the grating to the more complex circuitry below. There was blood, too, dark, rusty splotches on the usually spotless metal. They must have materialized the TARDIS around Jack and Ianto to get them off the Plass, she realized, staring at the stain.

Her intention had been to do this as quickly as possible. But now that she was here, she found she couldn’t leave without saying good-bye. She touched the console and felt the TARDIS whispering to her, as she had ever since the Game Station - not words, but feelings. The ship was sorry, Rose realized, for what had happened. Sorry, and sad, and terribly, terribly worried about her Doctor.

“You’ll have Donna,” Rose told her aloud. “You’ll both be all right with Donna.”

There was a spark of humor at Donna’s name, then one last psychic caress, almost as though the TARDIS had hugged her, and she was gone. Rose sighed and turned away. No more stalling.

Jack was standing in the doorway to the rest of the ship, watching her. Rose jumped, startled and rather embarrassed at being caught talking to the ship. “What are you doing here?” she demanded, more harshly than she’d intended.

He shrugged. “Ianto kicked me out.”

Rose blinked. “Oh.” He looked like hell; he was covered in blood and his face was almost gray. There was no way he could possibly look his age, but there was a certain youthful vitality, a certain _Jackness_ that was missing. He’d lost everything, too, she realized.

No. He hadn’t lost anything. He was throwing it away. _He_ still had choices left, even if he was too blind to see them.

She owed him, Rose decided. Nothing could ever make up for what she had done to him on the Game Station, but she could repay the kindness he’d shown her the past two days. Not that he was likely to see it that way, but she didn’t think there was anyone left to sit him down and make him listen. “Were you on your way anywhere in particular?” she asked.

He shook his head. “No, just - out.”

She nodded. “Good. I’m here to get my things. Come with me?”

“Actually -”

Rose grabbed his ear, just as her mother had her own on occasion when she was a child. “Jack. I said, _come with me_.”

“Ow, all right!” She let go, and Jack reached up to cover his ear protectively. He glared. “What was that for?” She gave him a narrow-eyed look, even as she turned to lead him down the corridor. “Oh.”

She shot him another look over her shoulder but didn’t reply. She pushed him into her room ahead of her, not quite trusting him not to bolt otherwise. She pointed to the bed and, with a strange sense of reverse deja vu, said, “Sit.”

He sat. "I know what you’re thinking.”

"Do you?" Rose asked evenly.

Jack nodded, frowning deeply. "You think I'm being irrational."

"Yes," she said frankly. "I also know you think you aren't. But let me tell you something, Jack." She pulled her duffel bag from the wardrobe and dropped it on the bed. "In this bag is everything I own in this universe. I gave up everything, sacrificed everything, to get back here and find the Doctor. I'm not getting my happy ending, but I'll be damned if I’m going to stand here and watch you throw away yours."

He looked at her, eyes dark and unhappy. "I don't get happy endings. Just endings. One after another. Forever."

"Well, I for one would gladly settle for a happy _for-the-time-being_ ," Rose replied, hands on her hips. “Is this really what you’re going to do for the rest of forever? Shove aside anyone you might genuinely care about? You’re scared and I get that. But for God’s sake, Jack. When did you turn into as big an emotional coward as the Doctor?”

Jack stood up, putting them toe-to-toe, if not eye-to-eye. “You don’t get to judge me,” he hissed. “You, of all people, Rose Tyler, do not get to judge me.”

“No,” she said steadily, refusing to step back, “but I, of all people, have a responsibility to you. Don’t do this, Jack. You’ll regret it. And you’ll have a lot longer to regret it than anyone else ever does.”

Jack sagged. He sank back onto the bed and put his head in his hands. “I told you,” he said, voice muffled. “I understand the Doctor a lot better than I’d like to.” He looked up at her. “Sometimes I look at him, and I think, I’ll outlive him, too. Someday he’ll be gone and I’ll still be here. I’m tired, Rose. I love people and I lose them and I’m tired of it. That whole thing about it being better to have loved and lost? It’s bullshit.”

Rose sat down beside him and put her arm around him. “But we don’t have a choice, Jack. None of us do.”

He shook his head. “I can’t do it anymore. I’m sorry, Rose.” He turned and kissed her forehead. “But thanks for trying.”

Rose watched him go. She pulled her duffel bag into her lap and sighed.

Saving the world used to feel better than this.


	9. Chapter 9

The Hub was silent and still when Jack emerged from the TARDIS. Gwen, presumably, was busy coordinating with the police, and Donna was probably helping her. Jack didn’t know where Rose’s Doctor had got to. Ianto and their - _his_ Doctor were in the TARDIS. Jack doubted he’d see either of them again.

He stood for a minute in the middle of the main floor, letting his shoulders slump. It was a general rule that any day he ended up covered in blood was not a good day, but he thought this one deserved an award for truly exceeding standards of hellishness. Every time he’d thought he was about to get up off the mat, he’d gotten smacked down again. Now, he ached all over, his head pounded, and he needed a shower. He probably needed food, too, but the mere thought set his stomach roiling.

The shower, at least, he could manage. He didn’t want to chance running into the Doctor in his office or room - _Coward_ , a voice that sounded a hell of a lot like Rose informed him - so he trudged down to showers in the locker room, one floor below. He spent ten minutes under the hottest spray he could stand, eyes closed against the sting of the water. Then he washed his hair until the water stopped running pink and spent some time trying to get the dried blood out from beneath his fingernails, with marginal success.

None of it helped. Not that he’d really expected it to. He supposed he should be glad that Ianto and the Doctor would be happy together, traveling in the TARDIS or wherever they decided to settle. They had never really needed him. And he would get - well, he’d get nothing. But he would also never again have to watch as Ianto’s heart stopped, maybe for good next time. For him, the two of them would be forever out there, alive and well.

The knobs squeaked and the piped protested as he turned the water off. His skin felt tender but clean. He toweled his hair dry, combed it, and put on fresh clothes from the stash in his locker. The Doctor was probably done collecting his things by now, so he took a deep breath and headed back upstairs. There was movement in the kitchen as he passed, but Jack hurried up the stairs to his office, reluctant to face anyone.

Safe at last, he seated himself at his desk and attempted to focus. The usual Monday morning conference call with their UNIT liaison was scheduled for an hour from now, and there’d been no time to prepare. He’d need to write a report on the events of the last twenty-four hours. His email was undoubtedly out of control.

He couldn’t have cared less if he’d tried.

He pulled his mobile out of his pocket and looked at it. Then he accessed his most recent text messages.

I LOVE YOU JACK. TAKE CARE OF HIM. SEE YOU SOON.

He’d barely registered it at the time. Ianto had been bleeding to death and the world had been coming apart at the seams. It was only now that he realized how unusual that message was. _I love you_ wasn’t something he or the Doctor ever said. Jack had thought it wasn’t something either of them needed to say. Or hear, for that matter. Not that it mattered now.

He couldn’t quite bring himself to turn the phone off - there were limits to his irresponsibility, even while wallowing in self-pity - but he did put it on silent. He slumped in his chair, contemplating the little chunk of TARDIS coral on his desk. It was a favorite technique of his for when he didn't want to think about anything in particular; he'd figured out long ago that he looked at it, the low level psychic pulse it emitted let him block out everything else. Jack’s eyes lowered to half-mast and he drifted in a twilight state between waking and sleeping.

Uncounted minutes later, there was a knock at the door. Jack blinked, then sighed. There was really no one he wanted to talk to, but it’d almost be more trouble than it was worth to pretend he wasn’t here. "Come in.”

It was the Doctor - Rose’s Doctor, as Jack had begun thinking of him. He looked as wrung out as Jack felt and probably hadn’t managed a shower yet. "Jack," he said, leaning wearily on the doorjamb. "I'm looking for -" He broke off, eyes widening as he caught sight of the coral on Jack's desk. He stepped forward for a better look. "Is that what I think it is?"

Jack nodded. "Your old friend the Brigadier gave it to me in the '70s, said it'd come off the TARDIS during one of your visits to UNIT. I used to think that if I never found you - well.” Jack shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. I like having it around."

The Doctor smiled and reached out to touch it, almost tenderly, with the tip of one finger. "Let me know if you ever want to do something with her. Usually they take hundreds of years to grow, but I know a trick or two. Or I could just give you a lift to the end."

Jack raised an eyebrow. "Thanks, Doc. I will."

The Doctor shrugged. "Least I can do. Anyway, I was looking for Rose. Have you seen her?"

"Not for a while." Not since she'd torn a strip off him in the TARDIS. "Are you leaving, then?"

The Doctor nodded. "Soon." He frowned. "I understand I'm to have an extra passenger."

Jack didn't look at him. "Yeah."

"Did you mean me to have two?" Jack shrugged. The Doctor sighed. When he spoke, his voice was very quiet. "Jack. What are you doing?"

Jack forced himself to look the Doctor in the eye. "I don't know. What are you doing?"

To Jack’s surprise and consternation, the Doctor shook his head and dropped into a chair on the other side of his desk. "I don't know. Donna thinks I'm throwing away the best thing to happen to me in years."

Jack snorted. "Rose said the same thing to me. More or less."

The Doctor studied the surface of the desk. “I’ve been thinking about that FDR quote from his first inaugural.”

"Fear itself?” The Doctor nodded. Jack grimaced. “I’ve always thought that was a nice idea, but it’s not really true. There are lots of things to fear."

The Doctor frowned. "Well, yes, but you’re missing the point. He meant that the fear of being afraid is what cripples us. And we both know that is true."

Jack thought of Ianto, so pale and still - _deathly_ still - and the high pitched sound of his heart monitor flat-lining. He suddenly found he was gripping the desk with both hands. “Yeah,” he managed. “I see what you mean.”

The Doctor smiled weakly. "I'll tell you mine if you tell me yours."

Jack hesitated. But who else could he tell? No one else knew what it was like to look into the dark chasm of a future without the people he loved, of love and loss and more loss and eventual madness. “This morning - no, yesterday morning, before Wilf called, the three of us were talking. Ianto wanted us to buy a house. And when he told me that, all I could think about were empty rooms, with worn carpets, and those light patches on the walls that picture frames leave behind. And then Ianto . . ." His voice failed him. He had to swallow twice before he could speak again. "I was so sick-scared,” he managed at last. "Your turn."

The Doctor was very quiet for a long time. Jack had started to think he'd renege on their deal, when he finally said, "I could do what Donna says I should. Come back here, spend a few days every week or two. It doesn't matter how long I'm away in between, I could . . ."

"Ration it out.”

The Doctor nodded. "But if she's working for you . . . you can't promise me she'll be safe."

Jack shook his head. "No. She's a field agent and a damn good one. She'd kill me if I tried to coddle her."

"And what if one day I show up and instead of her, it’s you, telling me -" The Doctor stopped, swallowed hard. "Every time I materialized here, I'd be afraid."

"Fear itself," Jack said quietly.

"Yeah. And they don't understand," the Doctor said in frustration. "They can’t.”

Jack frowned. "They can, Doc. Of course they can. You don’t think Rose would be afraid, every time she said good-bye to you, that this time might be the last? And not because of your driving, but because something happened to you out there, leaving her always waiting and never knowing? They understand. They're just . . ." Jack drew a deep breath. "They're just braver."

The Doctor nodded, slowly. "Well. Maybe.”

Jack met and held his eyes. "I’ll tell you what I think you should do. I think you should take whatever time you and Rose have, however much or little."

The Doctor nodded. "And I think you should get your head out of your arse and tell your Doctor you're sorry. If you’re going to be pissed at him, you have to be pissed at Donna and me, too."

Jack grinned. "You called him Doctor."

"Yeah, well," the Doctor grumbled, "much as I hate to admit it, I think he's earned the title. He and Donna both."

Jack felt his smile fade. "What about the empty rooms?"

The Doctor sighed. “I don’t know. You know I’m not - I’m terrible with this sort of thing.”

“What sort?” Jack asked, frowning in confusion.

“The sort of that involves, er -” The Doctor waved his hand vaguely. “Being somewhere. On time. I’m terrible at it. But I could try.”

“Try?” Jack repeated, still thoroughly bewildered.

“Yes,” the Doctor said impatiently. “Try. To be there. For Rose. For you. You have to know - there are some very fixed points coming up in Earth’s history. I can’t interfere with those events. But once they happen - well. I can try and be there afterward.”

“Oh,” Jack said faintly. He was more touched than he knew how to say that the Doctor would even venture to make such a commitment. “Thanks. I’ll try, too. If something happens to Rose, I’ll do my best to be there for you.” Even if it meant crossing his own timeline.

The Doctor looked at him. Jack thought it might be the first time this Doctor ever really had. They had a lot of water under the bridge, Jack reflected, but somehow none of that seemed to matter just now. "Do you think we can do it, then?” the Doctor asked. “Between the two of us, can we be as brave as one of them?"

Jack nodded, slowly. "I hope so, Doc. Because I don't know about you, but I really hate the alternatives."

Rose was sitting on the sofa, hands folded carefully in her lap, when they emerged from the office. She stood and took two halting steps toward them. "Well," she said, smiling tremulously, "I suppose this is it, yeah?”

"Yeah," the Doctor said, stepping down to stand in front of her, "I suppose it is." Jack sucked in a breath through his teeth. The Doctor took her hands in his, pulling her toward him. In one fluid motion, he slid a hand into her hair and kissed her.

Rose's eyes flew open. Jack grinned and gave her two thumbs up. The corners of her eyes crinkled as she almost laughed, but then her eyes slid shut and she slid her hand down to rest at the very top of the Doctor’s ass. The Doctor slid his free hand down to grip hers, hard, and made a noise deep in his throat. Jack leaned against Gwen’s desk and valiantly resisted the urge to watch.

Well . . . mostly resisted. He was only human.

They were both grinning like lunatics when they finally came up for air. Jack grinned back. “So, not leaving right away after all, I take it?”

“Probably not,” the Doctor agreed, while Rose laughed and leaned her head on his shoulder.

“Tell you what,” Jack said, pulling his wallet out. He handed a card over - to Rose, despite the Doctor’s grab. “Torchwood credit card. The St. David’s not that far from here. On us, as thanks for helping out.”

Rose raised an eyebrow. “If it wasn’t for me, there wouldn’t have been anything to help out with,” she pointed out.

“Then consider it a gift.”

The Doctor frowned. “Is this a blatant attempt to steal my TARDIS?”

“No,” Jack said with exasperation, even as Rose smacked the Doctor on the arm. “It’s a blatant attempt to save you from yourselves. I don’t trust the two of you not to stall out again. Take the card, get a suite with a ridiculous bathtub, and enjoy each other.”

Rose nodded, pocketing the card. “Thank you.” She frowned. “But what about you?”

Jack gave her a rueful smile. "I'm about to find out. Wish me luck."

"Good luck. Oh, and a word of advice," Rose added, poking him in the chest as she passed him. " _Grovel_."

The medbay was exactly where Jack had left it, two doors down from the console room. Jack lingered outside, gathering his courage and shamelessly eavesdropping on Ianto and the Doctor. "I wish you wouldn't do this," the Doctor was saying, in a low, intimate voice. "Cardiff is your home."

"Home isn't a place,” Ianto said, “it's people."

"It's a place, too," the Doctor said firmly. "If it weren't, I wouldn't feel sick to my stomach every time I see a certain shade of red-orange that reminds me of the grass on Gallifrey. You don't think you'll miss it, but you will. A few months down the line, you'll realize you miss Welsh and the rain and your morning pastry, and you'll wonder why you ever left."

"And then I'll wake up next to you, and I'll remember."

"Ianto," the Doctor sighed, "I can't let you do this."

"It's really not your decision."

Silence fell. Jack eased the door open. They were curled up together on the bed, which the TARDIS had helpfully expanded so neither of them was in danger of falling off. The Doctor lay on top of the covers, his body molded to the curve of Ianto’s. Jack’s throat ached. He swallowed once, then knocked.

They both stiffened when they saw him. The Doctor sat up. Ianto rolled onto his back. "Hi," Jack said weakly.

"'Hi'?" Ianto repeated. "That's all you have to say? _Hi_?"

"Ian -"

"I'm going with the Doctor," Ianto announced. "I mean it, Jack."

Jack nodded. He looked down at his shoes. "I can't blame you. But I have something to say and I'd like you to hear it before you make any decisions. Both of you."

"I wasn't aware I had any decisions to make," the Doctor said evenly.

Jack nodded again. "I know." He drew a deep breath and raised his head. "When you told me you wanted to buy a house, it threw me."

"I know," Ianto said, with a touch of impatience, "we talked about this. If you've come here to make excuses -"

"No, Ianto, please. I'm not trying to excuse anything, and if after this you still want to leave, I won't stop you. But I need you to understand." Ianto nodded, relaxing against the Doctor. "It - it really threw me. I try not to think about the future, but all of the sudden I couldn't think about anything else, and it was just . . . awful." He paused to swallow against his suddenly dry throat. "So I was already cooking when you got hurt, and when I woke up to the Doctor shocking your heart -" His voice cracked. "Ianto, you have no idea what that did to me. I was so scared, and all I could think was that I couldn’t do it anymore. I just couldn’t.”

"And you thought that sending the Doctor away would mean I'd never get hurt again? That I'd never die?"

"No," the Doctor said softly. "That's not what he thought at all.”

“No,” Jack said, shakily, “it isn’t. I don’t think you realize how much it frightens to me think about the future. To think about living without you. To think about watching you die.”

“I do,” the Doctor said.

Jack nodded. "I know you do. But you’re not - you’re human now, Doctor. And the two of you . . . I watch you sometimes and you're so sweet together. You don't need me, not really.”

Ianto pushed himself up, or tried to. He pulled up short with a grimace and let the Doctor help him the rest of the way. "Jack, you - that’s - that’s not true. You know how we feel about you.”

 _Feel about you_ , present tense. Maybe he'd hadn't blown everything to smithereens after all. "I did - I do. But I also know you’d be fine without me.” Jack took a halting step into the room and spread his hands out. Total surrender, he thought. Nothing else would do. "Doctor, I'm sorry. You did the best you could. It was better than anything anyone else came up with, and it worked.”

The Doctor studied him carefully. Finally he nodded. "Thanks."

Ianto sighed. "I suppose it's useless to ask you to promise you won't ever do anything like this again." Jack grimaced. Ianto snorted. "Well, I can't say I didn't know what I was getting into. You could _tell_ us, you know, when you feel one of these freak-outs coming on."

Jack shrugged “I can try. Habit of a lifetime and all that. Several, actually."

The Doctor laughed quietly. "I know the feeling." He and Ianto exchanged a look Jack didn't even try to read. He held his breath as the Doctor stood and crossed to him. He cupped Jack’s face in his hands and looked at him. Jack let his breath leak out slowly. The Doctor shifted his body closer so that they were touching, lightly, everywhere. Then he kissed Jack, very softly. "You're forgiven," he murmured. "But only because we love you."

Jack smiled weakly. “Yeah, I know. I got your text.” The Doctor chuckled.

"Hey," Ianto said plaintively. "Don't forget me."

"Never," Jack said, reaching for him. Just now, he decided, the future didn't matter. Kissing Ianto mattered.

Hours later, after the clean-up on the Plass had commenced and the media had been lied to and UNIT had been fobbed off until tomorrow, Jack got Donna to shift the TARDIS to Ianto’s flat. Thanks to the Doctor’s skills in the medbay, Ianto was able to walk out of the TARDIS under his own power, though he and Jack stuck close by his side. Ianto was clearly exhausted by the short walk to the bedroom, but he insisted on a bath before anything else. Jack left the Doctor to do the honors and took himself off to the kitchen to make tea and sandwiches.

Ianto was so tired, he nearly fell asleep over his plate. Cross-legged on the duvet, Jack watched the Doctor coax him into eating half a sandwich, which he did with minimal grumbling. Finally clean, fed, and horizontal, he dropped off in less than ten seconds. Jack watched him sleeping, slumped against the Doctor’s chest, and felt something tight in his chest release at last.

The Doctor swallowed the last of his egg salad sandwich and chased it with his tea. “I need a shower too,” he said, sniffing at himself with a grimace. “Care to join me?”

“Actually, I already -” The Doctor gave him a look. “Of course,” Jack said, letting his voice soften. He’d apologized and been forgiven, but he thought he and the Doctor might be careful with each other for awhile yet.

He was right, or so it seemed at first. Their usual dance for soap and shampoo and water was tinged with awkwardness, and neither of them could quite look the other in the eye. Usually Jack would have done something to cut through the tension, but he wondered if he ought to leave it up to the Doctor. Jack had fucked things up so badly today, he didn’t quite trust himself. He’d let it be for now, he decided, ignoring the voice that told him things would only get worse. He didn’t have the right to push the Doctor after the way he’d treated him today. Maybe tomorrow when things had -

The Doctor took Jack by the shoulders and pushed him up against the tile. Jack opened his eyes, blinking away the water. “Hello,” the Doctor said, and kissed him. Jack froze briefly and then went with it. After all, he’d decided to leave things up to the Doctor.

The Doctor kissed him until Jack’s knees went weak, and they slid down into the bathtub, the spray falling down on them like warm rain. Jack was turned on but content to keep it at a simmer. It was the contact that mattered: the Doctor’s hand in his hair, Jack’s hand on the Doctor’s hip, the Doctor’s foot stroking the inside of Jack’s ankle. He’d come so close to never having this again. Somewhere, in some other universe, Jack had let Ianto and the Doctor walk out of his life forever. In that universe, Jack was sitting alone in his office, save for his little chunk of TARDIS coral and his regrets.

The Doctor pulled away. “Hey. Where’d you go?”

Jack shook his head, swallowing past the ache in his throat. “Sorry. I just - Doctor, I’m so sorry.”

The Doctor stroked his face. “I know. We’re okay.”

Jack shoved himself up. “That’s what I don’t understand. How can we be? Why aren’t you furious with me?”

The Doctor sighed, letting his head drop forward to rest against Jack’s shoulder. “I don’t know. I should be. But,” he hesitated, “I also know how it feels.” He lifted his head and looked at Jack. “I used to be _him_ , and I know what it’s like to be so afraid of losing someone that you’re not sure it’s even worth having them to begin with. Come to think of it,” he added bemusedly, “this is the first time I’ve ever been on the other side of that. It’s not much fun, either.”

“But -” Jack began.

The Doctor silenced him by laying a finger on Jack’s lips. “Stop. Stop worrying about how I can forgive you. All that matters is that I do. I forgive you because I remember being as scared spitless as you were today. And also, I love you. You do know that, don’t you?”

“Of course,” Jack said, raising his eyebrows. “Though I’m a little unnerved by your sudden need to say it all the time.”

“Get used to it. I’ve got a lot of time to make up for.” The Doctor shifted awkwardly in the tight confines of the bathtub, and Jack moved over to make room for him to settle at his side. “But there’s no _of course_ about it,” he went on, once they were tucked into each other’s arms and bodies. “Ianto told me what you said on the Plass. It worries me that you don’t believe I love you as much as I love him.”

“That’s not -” The Doctor frowned. Jack sighed. “- totally untrue,” he conceded. “I know you care. But nothing happened until you fell in love with Ianto. Sometimes I can’t help but think that . . .” Jack hesitated. This was a lot of honesty for one day. But the Doctor was looking at him as though he already knew what Jack was going to say, and it seemed foolish to quit now, when he’d come so far. “I can’t help but think you’re only with me so you can have him,” Jack finished.

The Doctor sighed. “Jack,” he said quietly, stroking Jack’s wet hair back from his face. “My Jack. I did a number on you when I was him, didn’t I? I’m so sorry.” He brushed his lips across Jack’s hairline, then pressed their foreheads together so their noses bumped. “I doubt there’s anything I can say that can undo all of that. So I’m just going to show you, as often as possible, that you’re mine. And yes, I’m going to tell you I love you,” he added with a smile, “even when it makes you squirm, because it’s something you deserve to hear, just as much as Ianto does.”

“Oh,” Jack said, in a small voice that was all he could manage.

The Doctor kissed him briefly. Then he sat up and pushed a hand through his damp hair. “Good. Now, shall we move this to the bed? I think the hot water’s running out.”

Jack was silent as they towelled off and changed into pajamas. Ianto was curled up in the exact center of the bed. The Doctor slid in beside him with a tired sigh and turned onto his side, draping his arm over Ianto. “Good night, Jack,” he murmured. “Love you.”

Jack didn’t answer. He stood looking at the bed, bathed in the light of a street lamp outside. _Mine_ , he thought at last, and crawled in beside them.

To his surprise, he slept well - nearly five hours of unbroken rest was unheard of for him. Still, when he woke it was the middle of the night and both his partners were sound asleep. Jack luxuriated under the covers for nearly an hour, enjoying the warmth of the bed and the comfort of listening to his partners breathe, but eventually boredom and a barely formed plan drove him out of bed and into the lounge.

A few minutes of prowling revealed that Ianto had recently begun locking the bottom drawer of his desk. Jack picked it easily and found a drawer filled with the paper detritus of a twenty-first century life, all meticulously labeled and organized. Nothing at all to warrant the lock. Jack examined each file carefully, until he hit the jackpot a little more than halfway through the drawer. Ianto had filed it under _N_ for _No Way in Hell._

He spent a couple of hours going carefully through the file on the floor in the lounge. When the sky outside started to turn gray, he made a cup of tea and returned to the bedroom, sliding in beside Ianto to continue his reading.

Nearly an hour later, Ianto stirred, making adorable snuffling noises. "Mmm," he mumbled, shifting his head so it rested against Jack's hip. "What time is it?"

"Half seven," Jack said, keeping his voice low to avoid waking the Doctor. "Hey, what do you think about Penylan?"

Ianto blinked. "Er. What?"

"Penylan. The neighborhood. It's nice, isn't it?"

"It's very nice," Ianto said, frowning. "Jack, what are you - where did you get that?"

"Your desk. The Rift never seems to dump anything in Penylan. I like this one," he said, passing one of the print-outs to Ianto. "Four bedrooms and a loft. We could make one of the extra rooms into a guestroom and convert the others into offices or whatever. It has a nice backyard. We could get a dog."

"Jack, that's . . . I wasn’t actually serious about that house," Ianto said, staring at the photo of the enormous Victorian. "It’s a lot of money. And I don't think I want a dog."

"Yeah, you're probably right. Dogs are a lot of work. A cat? Two cats?"

"I’m allergic to cat dander. I don’t understand.” Ianto sounded thoroughly bewildered. "I thought we were going to look for a bigger flat."

Jack shrugged. "We can, if you want. But I don't know. The idea of buying a house is really starting to grow on me."

"Jack," Ianto said, his voice suddenly gone gentle, "you don't have to do this."

"Do what?"

"Try and make up to me like this. A house is way too big for an apology."

Jack nodded, shuffling the papers into an even stack with the one he liked on top. "You're right. Houses make terrible apologies." He tossed the stack of papers onto the nightstand and rolled over to face Ianto. "But they make great promises.”

Ianto swallowed. "But - Jack. Are you sure?"

Jack took a deep breath. "Not really. But give me time." He leaned in and kissed him. "I want to do this. Let me do this."

"Do what?" came a muffled voice from the other side of Ianto.

"Buy a house," Ianto said, sounding stunned.

"Oh," the Doctor said, raising his head. "Really?"

"If we all agree," Jack said, catching the Doctor's eye. "I know mortgages aren't really your thing."

The Doctor cocked his head to one side. "I don't know. I think they just might be. John Noble had no problem with mortgages."

"But you're not John Noble," Ianto pointed out.

"I am, sort of. I'm as much him as I am the Doctor. Ooh, can we get a cat? I like cats."

Ianto laughed tiredly and let his head fall back. "Oh God, what am I going to do with the two of you?"

"I can think of a few things," Jack said, smirking, and ducked the pillow Ianto aimed at his head.

***

Morning in Cardiff dawned gray but bright. Donna purchased a mocha at a café that was open to cater to the police and firefighters helping to clear the rubble and commandeered the single surviving bench on the Plass. There she sat, placidly sipping her coffee as she waited for the Doctor and Rose to return.

It was later than she’d expected - nearly ten - by the time she caught sight of them. A police constable stopped them at the perimeter of the Plass, but the Doctor flashed his psychic paper and he let them through. Donna was pleased to see that they were holding hands and smiling broadly as they picked their way across the pavement toward her.

“Good morning,” she greeted them.

“Yes, it is!” The Doctor fairly _chirped_. Rose grinned and winked at Donna. “Did you have a good night?”

“I had a short night,” Donna informed him. “But so did you, I expect.” The Doctor sputtered. Rose smothered a laugh behind her hand. Donna hid her grin behind her last sip of coffee. “So, what’s the plan?” she asked, when the Doctor had finished gaping like a stretched-out guppy.

The Doctor abruptly stopped smiling. His eyes shuttered and he looked out at the bay, slate gray in the morning light. Rose gently turned the Doctor’s face back to look at her. “It’s okay to say it,” she said. “This is what we talked about, yeah?”

He nodded. “I know. Right. Well, I think we’d better go, Donna - that is, if you want to go, I suppose I never asked, I just assumed, but you might want to go back to London, of course, I’m sure you had things you were doing -”

“I do want to go to London, yeah,” she interrupted, just to get him to shut up, “but only to see Mum and Gramps and let them know I’m not dead. Jack said he called them, but I think they’ll probably want to see me.”

“Probably,” the Doctor said. He winced. “Do we have to have tea with them?”

“Yes,” she said firmly, “we do. It won’t kill you.”

“‘Spose not,” he sighed.

“And what about,” Donna hesitated, “long-term?”

“Long-term,” the Doctor said, as though testing the words out in his mouth. It probably was a fairly foreign concept, Donna reflected; for all the Doctor’s age and experience, she doubted he’d planned anything more than a few days in advance in . . . well, probably in the last several centuries. “Long-term, we’ll come back when we’re able.” He looked down at Rose and his expression softened. “As often as we’re able.”

“Good!” Donna said. “I’m sure my mum and granddad will be happy to hear that, too.”

“C’mon then,” Rose said, swinging their joined hands. “I’ll see you off, and then I’m sure there’s work to be done. Is Gwen in?”

Donna nodded. “In the Hub. We heard from Jack about an hour ago - he and the Doctor should be in shortly. Do you want to wait for them?” she asked the Doctor.

“Ah, no,” he said, as they followed Donna into the tourist information center. “Best not. No time like the present, _allons-y_ , and all that. They’ll understand.”

In other words, Donna thought, mentally translating Alien Prawn-to-English in her head, the Doctor didn’t want a scene. Saying good-bye to Rose would be bad enough. Well, it wasn’t as though they were leaving forever. She’d have him back here inside of a week as long as the TARDIS cooperated.

The three of them paused in front of the TARDIS, and Donna grinned at Rose. “Told you we’d sort it.”

Rose laughed. “You did.” She threw her arms around Donna and hugged her tight. “Thank you so much,” she whispered in Donna’s ear.

“It was nothing.” Donna squeezed her hard before pulling away to hold her at arm’s length. “Just remember: you’re smashing, Rose Tyler. With or without this one.” She jerked a thumb in the Doctor’s direction.

“Oi!” the Doctor said.

“What? It’s true.” Donna hugged Rose one last time. “See you soon, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Rose said, nodding.

Donna let her go and strode up the ramp to allow them say good-bye in private. Well . . . mostly in private. Once inside the TARDIS, she couldn’t resist turning on the external monitor. Just to make sure, she told herself.

She needn’t have worried. The Doctor and Rose kissed - a proper snog, not just a friendly peck - and then held each other for a long time. When they finally pulled away, Rose was wiping her eyes, but she was also smiling. The Doctor kissed her one last time, said something that made her laugh, and turned toward the TARDIS.

Donna had just enough time to side-step away from the monitor before the doors swung open. “Right, then!” the Doctor said, closing the doors behind him. “Where to, Donna Noble? The future? The past? Fancy a bite? There’s this restaurant I always meant to take you to, fantastic crepes - well, I say crepes, but really they’re -”

“London, remember?” Donna said. His face fell. She rolled her eyes. “Just for a bit. As in a few minutes. After that, crepes sound brilliant.”

The Doctor nodded. He bounded over to the console. “Ready?” he asked her.

She put her hands on her hips. “Are you?”

He glanced at the monitor. Rose was just where he’d left her, but even as they watched, Gwen came up and put her arm around her shoulders. She said something and Rose laughed. Then she blew a kiss at the TARDIS and followed Gwen toward the kitchen. The Doctor let out a long breath. “Yeah. I am,” he said. He looked at her. “You won’t let me forget or - or screw it up?”

She shook her head. “I promise.”

He nodded. Then he hugged her hard enough to squeeze the breath out of her. “Donna Noble, you’re magnificent. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” she said, patting his back. “Now get a move on, spaceman. Alien crepes await!”

 _Fin._


End file.
